Somehow, almost 5 years have gone by since I initially ran the Free Being Me program. How is that possible? Some of my former Brownies who completed the badge are now my Junior Leaders! As always, reusing a program is always an experience. Things this time around have definitely been.... different. We've had quite a few challenges and interruptions this term (even prior to isolation), which put us a little behind on the planned schedule for FBM. Anyway, I was a little apprehensive about moving the program to our online meetings, but the meeting went so well! It has renewed my excitement for the program, and I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can best work through the other activities using our online meeting format. We're halfway through session three, and I'm continuing to take things slowly to make sure the program gets completed properly with everybody participating. Not ideal, but it's better than no-one gaining anything from the experience. Our first activity was airbrushing and it was run almost exactly how I originally ran it. The actual activity in FBM is only a 10 minute activity, but I rounded it out to about 30-40 minutes. I'm so glad I did this again, because we had some really great discussions. Zoom (the program we are using to host our meetings), allows users to share images and video. This was fantastic as every member had the airbrushing images appear on their screens. We had some great discussion, first playing a "spot-the-difference" challenge with the images and then answering the "Talk About" questions in the FBM program (page 25 of booklet). We finished the meeting with a craft activity. I had emailed everybody a template to print and they provide their own magazines and colouring-in supplies from home. The activity was to fill the figure with images that describes your personality. Some examples included: mountains for love of adventure and a bow-tie for silliness. There were some really creative final results! I'm still working on everybody sending me photos of their work after meetings, but at least I get to see it during the meeting.
After we completed session three (part two) of Free Being Me, we had some extra time, so we were able to work on the extra activity I had prepared. Girlguiding UK has a great badge program called Go For Its! This activity was found in the Life Wise activity pack and is listed under the Wellbeing activities (pages 2-11), which align really well with the Free Being Me program.
The activity for Beautiful People is listed on page 2 and is activity number four. The template is available on page 3. I adapted the activity slightly, as I had the girl's represent themselves, rather than an imaginary person.
Activity: Create the beautiful person you are using images from magazines to represent your personality. You can use any images except for those with people in them. Here are some of the pictures that the girl's created. I think if I did this with older Guides they may be more concerned about staying within the lines, but the Brownies didn't mind. They really enjoyed this activity and had really great discussion about their personality traits!
Note: I ripped pages out of magazines ahead of time with images of nature, bright colors, animals etc. I knew the girl's would be distracted by adverts, celebrities etc. I'm glad I did, because they stayed on topic the entire time.
I definitely recommend this activity if you have the time!
Remember those great 'treasure inside of me' boxes that the girl's made for the initial Free Being Me meeting? As we have completed the FBM program, it's probably time to show you what was inside! Read the original post about the boxes here.
Here are some excerpts, to give you an idea of the lovely messages that were written.
I hope these messages give the girl's a pick-me-up when they need it and remind them of their amazing lifelong 'sisters'!
This is part two of Free Being Me, session three. If you've read my earlier posts, you know that this session was not completed in one night for a variety of reasons. If you missed session three - part one, I recommend that you read that post first.
Change the Media In our previous meeting, each Patrol had been given just under 10 minutes to begin preparations for 'taking over the media'. During this meeting, they were given another 15 minutes to get their ideas together before presenting their final product to the unit. The presentations were great - on topic and completely unique! Two of the groups even requested to use images from our airbrushing activity! I have to admit that while watching these presentations, I definitely had my proud Leader moment of 'Wow, these girl's are really getting this!'
I managed to take some photographs of the draft outlines as seen below.
A magazine article:
An original song:
A news report (with a very dramatic reading!):
An advert for television, including a catchy jingle and dance number:
For my drama-loving Junior Guides, this was a great activity for them to share everything that they had learnt over the past three meetings.
Personal Challenge: You're My Star
Each girl created a star with a positive message written inside, that challenged the idea that everyone should look a certain way. The personal challenge component, was to take these home at the end of the meeting to display where others would be able to read them. Some of the stars (before they were cut out):
And my personal favourite:
You're My Star was the final activity to complete session three. We had additional time in the meeting, so ended with a great craft project I discovered through one of the GirlGuiding UK's GFI programs. (Thanks Snowflake, for helping me discover these!) Since this has already been such a photo heavy post, i'll post the about this separately.
This is the session where everything went a little off the rails. Not that it was bad or unsuccessful by any means, just that everything took so much time to get through and we only completed half of the activities in the session.
It's one of those situations that you look at afterwards and realise all the things you could have done differently. Ahhh, hindsight.
Personal Challenge Sharing: Fortune Teller The girl's took their fortune tellers home at the end of session two, to write in the blank spaces, eight things they liked about themselves.
Credit: Free Being Me, 7-10 year activity pack, page 47
Most of my girl's have been with the unit for well over a year and so i'm not exaggerating when I say that whenever we do a craft, I know that there will be very little time for anything else during the meeting. For some reason when planning my FBM sessions, I did not classify the fortune teller activity as a craft. And that was a mistake. If I had, I would have requested that the girl's colour, cut AND fold their fortune tellers at home. Obviously this did not happen and so time was spent colouring in the picture (we had used black and white printing for the template), cutting it out and folding it (and let's not mention that I demonstrated folding it inside out, and then had to start again!). Then there was the girl that left hers at home and had to start from scratch, the girl that was making her first visit to the unit and the multiple fortune tellers I had to refold as they wouldn't work properly. (And again I ask myself, how did I not predict this happening?!) Please understand that I am not saying anything against this activity (just my own preparation!). It did exactly what it was supposed to and once we finally got through the 'craft' aspect, the girl's had fun sharing positive things about themselves to as many other Brownie Guides as possible. My favourite positive message was "I like my awesome dance moves".
Note: As you can see in the image above, the star designs in the corners are all identical - whether you print the template in colour or in black and white. This means that when you are ready to play there is absolutely no way to differentiate between the first four squares on the fortune teller. Remember to colour each star in a different colour or add another distinctive feature in each box! Yes, this was something else that slowed us down. Learn from my mistakes!
Airbrushing: Spot the Difference This activity was supposed to run for 10 minutes, however I knew that airbrushing would be a topic that my girl's would find interesting, so I decided to expand it. (Yes, even though we were already running 20 minutes behind schedule).
We began with a discussion about airbrushing and digitally altering images. All the girls were familiar with the concept, although they referred to it as photoshopping. So that required a slight side discussion about the program Adobe Photoshop and that it was one of many programs that could be used to digitally alter images. Then we watched the Dove Evolution Youtube video by Tim Piper. I had planned on having a second viewing in slow motion, but scrapped that due to our time limits. After watching the video, we discussed the digital alterations we had observed, which gave the girls some things to look out for in the following activity.
This is the transformation that occurs in the video:
In Patrols, each group was then given an airbrushing sheet with a different set of images. I used the photos provided in the FBM 7-10 years activity pack and also photographs I found online, which depicted more extreme examples of airbrushing.
Given 5 minutes, each Patrol made a list of differences they could spot in the before and after airbrushing examples. Then we came together as a unit and each Patrol presented their images and the differences they had spotted. All of them were really shocked about the huge list of things that had been altered, and it led to come great comments and discussion. Can you figure out which list matches each image?
I know that other Leader's have used photos of celebrities during this activity. I tried to do this, but found it really difficult to find authentic before and after photos. Most of them seemed to have also been manipulated! Now having completed this activity, I am glad that I was not able to locate the celebrity photographs. I feel that these images would be distracting and that it is more meaningful using every day girls. Girl Guides Australia has provided additional airbrushing images so make sure you download them for your meeting. Unfortunately, I didn't realise these existed until after our meeting or I would have used these instead.
Time-wise, this activity took about 40 minutes. I know that I added in the video and extra images, but the girl's had a LOT to talk about when we got to the discussion questions and wanted to share their own experiences.
Change the Media
This activity is all about taking on the media and sending out a positive message to help others to be body confident. By the time we had completed our other activities (only two!), we only had 10 minutes remaining before going home. So the girl's spent those 10 minutes getting their instructions and then writing up drafts of their media piece to continue with the following week.
So that was session three.... part one. Since week three needed to be continued in another meeting, I will post those activities separately.
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Time is definitely my biggest challenge during meetings. What is yours?
Here is a run through of the activities from session two. We stayed on task and even had time for singing campfire songs at the end! Game: Pelele I found this activity a bit of a challenge to prepare. I love campfire songs, enjoy singing and can play music instruments. However, creating a tune to go with lyrics is not in my skill set. I scoured the internet trying to find out how to sing/chant this song and the only thing I found was this Youtube video of Girl Scout in Taiwan. Thank you ladies for sharing this video! Fortunately that was my only difficulty and the game was a huge hit.
Pelele, Pelele, we like you,
We like you the way you are,
Pelele, Pelele, we like you,
And we like (name) too!
Everybody starts by standing in a circle holding a blanket with a small toy (pelele) in the middle. While singing the Pelele song, a girl from the group is named in the final line. Once the song ends, this girl names an activity she is good at eg. My name is ____ and i'm good at running. She and all the girl's that also like running, need to run around the blanket and back to their place. The song continues until everybody has been named. Using a rather small blanket (we don't own a parachute) and a light weight ball, we practiced first to not have the ball fly off the blanket and across the room. Teamwork! Then introduced the song. After a few rounds, I was able to leave the girl's to themselves to run the game. They even wanted to play a second time after everybody had been named. There are always questions when a new game is introduced and of course, the first one was: What if everybody is good at something? We decided that meant that the blanket was dropped and everybody ran at the same time. This only occurred twice, once for reading and once for bushwalking! (Makes note for future term planning.) Only looking back through the activity book have I realised that I am mis-pronouncing Pelele. Pelele is supposed to be pronounced 'Pe-lel-ay' and i've been teaching 'Pe-lay-le'. Oops! Personal Challenge Sharing: Role Model Wall Last week every girl took home a role model worksheet to complete. As I mentioned in my session one post, only half the Brownies brought back their sheets. The rest brought theirs along to session three. Role models chosen included: mothers, fathers, teachers, cousins and even one of the other Brownies! Some reasons for liking the role models included:
She is kind
He teaches me how to cook
He helps me with my homework
She plays with me
She drives me to school
She is gentle
She is strong
She works hard
All awesome reasons!
Once Upon a Time
This activity involved reading a story about two mice, Millie and Gilly. Gilly was so worried about her appearance that she missed out on many fun activities with Millie and her other friends. The story is a decent length, taking up an entire A4 page in the activity book. Knowing my girl's, I wasn't sure what moods they would be in after school and if they would behave and listen. So I had everybody spread out around the hall and lie down with their eyes closed. I read the intro paragraph and then would tap a girl's shoulder which indicated that it was her turn to read. I had asked ahead of time who wanted to help read the story and everybody was excited to have a turn! Everybody read a few lines until the story was complete. This worked really well and they were able to discuss the story and characters perfectly afterwards! The Guides close to do this as drama activity, with each Patrol acting and narrating a portion of the story.
The next step was to break into pairs and draw the characters of Millie and Gilly. Then the pairs came together forming two small groups, each with an adult, to discuss the characters.
Some drawings of Millie the mouse.
A Happy Ending In groups of about four girls, a picture of Gilly was glued onto a larger piece of paper so that the Brownies could write around the outside. Numbers were added to the picture of Gilly (as seen below).
Taking turns to roll a die, the girl's had to write down something that Gilly is able to do with the corresponding body part. The activity book suggested that if double numbers were rolled, to simply roll again for a new number, with groups competing until all six numbers were rolled. I felt that the competitiveness would take away from the activity, so instead if a double number was rolled, the girl's had to come up with another positive comment to add. Some numbers were rolled many times, so this was quite a challenge. We played this until I felt there were enough answers (and before the girl's lost focus) and then we came together as a unit with each group presenting their answers.
See an example below of one of the Gilly's.
Here are some of the messages the Brownie Guides created.
Personal Challenge: I Like Me Fortune Teller Another take home challenge, this time using a print out of a fortune-teller (also known as a chatterbox or cootie catcher). There was 95% success rate of these being brought back the following week. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos!
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I hope this helps anyone also working through Free Being Me! Please let me know, as I would love to hear about your FBM journey. Also, if anybody has advice for the Pelele song or Ringa Ringa (session 4), please contact me!
