Continuing with our theme of communication the girls played a few games this week.
Is it me?
Guides stand in a circle with one girl on the outside. The Guide outside the circle walks around slowly, describing one of the
other girls, eg, “She is wearing white socks, she has brown hair, she has green shoelaces”.
When
a Guide thinks she recognises herself, she asks, “Is it me?”. If the answer is
“no”, the description continues until another Guide asks “is it me?” If the
answer is “yes”, the Guide who has been described chases the describer around
the circle, trying to catch her before she can get to the vacant place (just like duck-duck-goose). The
game continues with another girl outside the circle giving a description.
Outcome:
The Brownies really enjoyed this, but after about 6 rounds I could see they were starting to get silly, so we ended on a high note. Silliness was mostly everybody calling out all at the same time, "IS IT MEEEEEE?"
We also had one girl not in uniform this week, so we had to put a stop to the Brownies first description being "she is wearing Guide uniform". The poor girl was just deflating after being obviously not chosen each turn.
No Talking
Start by holding up the sign below. Continue to do so until the girls are silent.
Next hold up a challenge card, such as either of the examples below.
During the activity, remind the girls to be silent by holding up the "no talking" sign.
Once the activity is complete (or appears to be too difficult to finish), hold up this sign. It actually works. Not a word was spoken until I brought this sign out and the girls didn't even know the sign existed! They were quite hilarious letting out gasping breathes as if they'd been forced to hold their breath the entire game. Quite the drama queens.
Hold a discussion with the Guides asking them to think about:
How they communicated with each other without talking.
What strategies were successful, which were not?
How can you get somebody's attention if you want to tell them something without talking?
Outcome:
I was pleasantly surprised at how well this game was received. I had all the girls sit on the floor and then held up the no talking sign. The giggles began instantly, although noone spoke, I think that I shocked them into silence! But as soon as I held up the second sign they grew serious and set to work. I admit I was completely shocked as they were in fairly silly moods all night long.
The girls worked well together, standing beside one another to figure out who was taller and then lined themselves along the back wall of the hall. All but one girl was in correct height order. They were so nervous when I went along the line measuring their heights!
During the discussion I asked who had the idea to line them up against the back of the hall (I had been expecting a line down the centre of the hall, just like in Captain's Coming!). The girls couldn't seem figure out who had instigated that decision.
The birthday challenge proved to be much more difficult, but the girls still did a great job with almost everybody in the correct place.
Methods of communicating included:
- Mouthing the words with no sound
- Using fingers to represent numbers
- Mime
- One of the girls, Miss 8 years, explained to me that she would show people 5 fingers representing the 5th, immediately followed by 3 fingers representing March. That led to a discussion that it was a great way to communicate IF others realised what you were saying!
The younger girls (7 years) struggled with the second challenge not really understanding how to communicate until they saw the older girls counting on their fingers. Then they quickly caught on. It was great to see!
Human Knot
Form a circle. Hold hands with two different people in the circle, but not the girl on either side of you. Now try to get untangled from the knot to form a circle.
Outcome:
I have not done this activity with the Brownies in a few years so only a couple were familiar with it. The girls worked well as a team (we hand two circles with 9 brownies each). The group of younger girls had quite a bit of difficultly but perservered until they were untangled. They immediately wanted to do it again!
I cannot locate the original sources for the first two games but I think that they might be from the Guiders.uk website. Thank you!
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What communication games do you play?
