Online games

Even though we're on school holidays at the moment, the Brownies decided to continue with our meetings. I decided to keep things simple and hold a games night.

We started by playing bingo. Everybody drew a 5x5 grid on a piece of paper and then filled them with random numbers from 1-100. I pulled up a random number generator to chose our numbers, which I screen-shared with everyone. We played for one row and then a full board. It took forever to finish and I would definitely do it differently next time! (Luckily the girls still enjoyed the activity! I was ready to it finish it before we had even reached a bingo).

Things I would do differently next time:

• Not use a random number generator! It was fine at first, but then repeated numbers so many times it become really difficult to move on.
• Next time use an online bingo caller such as this one: https://letsplaybingo.io 
• I kept track of numbers as they came up, but next time I'd start with a list of all the numbers and cross them off as I went.

Some of the hand-drawn bingo boards:

 

Next up, we played Would You Rather? I asked the group random questions that I had found online, and they would raise their hand if they wanted to share their answer. They also had to share why they would choose one option over the other. It was a fun activity and it was a great hearing their responses.

The questions we used are below.

Would you rather:

• fly or be invisible?
• be a famous singer or a famous actor?
• be a fish or a bird?
• swim in a pool or jelly or a pool of custard?
• have a pet dinosaur or a pet robot?
• be a pilot or a pirate?
• read books or write stories?
• go to the moon or go to Disneyland?
• never shower again or never cut your nails again?

Our final activity was Pictionary. We used the whiteboard feature in Zoom, and the girls took turns to draw pictures with everyone else guessing. The only clue given was the topic. Our topics were: food, animals and movies.

Can you guess what these pictures are? 

A hamburger and a peacock!

A few regrets with my bingo choices, but other than than another fun-filled meeting! 

Edited to add:

What are the chances?! I was just reading about a virtual sleepover on The Guiding Life and they also played Pictionary and Bingo! This bingo caller is much more fun than the google number generator I used!

Thinking Day 2020

Image credit: https://www.wagggs.org/en/resources/world-thinking-day-2020-communications-assets/

Happy World Thinking Day!

This year our meeting did not actually fall on the 22nd, so we celebrated earlier in the week. I originally had grand plans to use the activities from the Living Thread pack created by WAGGGS, but as my meeting plan kept getting longer and longer, I decided to save them for later in the term.

Our meeting:

• Girl-led games
• Skip into Brownie ring
• Discussion about Thinking Day, B-P etc. 
• World Centres game
• WTD Scavenger hunt
• Thinking Day (Captain's Coming)

Activity we didn't get to:
Crystal Rally relay race

Not using the Living Threads pack turned out to be a wise decision, as our concentration levels were quite low during the meeting and silliness factor at a high. Overall, a fairly basic introduction to Thinking Day, but with so many new members I'm fairly happy with how the program ran. Plus my Junior Leaders did a great job leading the activities and adding their own spin.

How did you celebrate World Thinking Day?

Mbube Mbube - African game

This is a fun game led by one of the girl's as a Junior BP challenge. Everyone really enjoyed it, and they played it through many times. 

World Guiding - learn a game from another country and teach it to your unit. 

Games from India

Each week as we worked on the Other People create-a-challenge badge, we would play a game or learn some basic language from India. Sometimes both, as you will see in one of the games below! Every game was fun (and successful). It is always a lovely surprise when new games go over well! 

Image credit

Bulbul Volleyball

Source: World Sangam Day Activity Pack

Equipment: Balloons

How to play:

1. Players sit in two lines facing each other, feet out in front of them touching the feet of the person opposite. 
2. The leader stands at one end of the line and throws a balloon into play. 
3. The players have to bounce the balloon around, trying to keep it from going behind their own line while getting it to land behind the opposite line - and players must keep their behinds on the floor at all times! 
4. Teams score one point each time the balloon lands behind the opposing line.

Hindi Colour Game

Source: World Sangam Day Activity Pack

Equipment: 

• Hindi colours written on coloured paper. Eg. Lal (Red) written on red paper.
• Youtube video to assist with pronunciation.

How to play:

1. The Leader calls out a colour in Hindi.

2. The girls must all run to touch something that colour.

Elimination: The last girl to touch the colour or someone that touches as incorrect colour is out. Or alternatively, can lose a life.

Added difficulty: The Leader can call out two or three 
colours all at once and the girls have to find a way of touching all of the colours at once.

Hindi Colours

Lal = Red

Narangi = Orange

Pila = Yellow

Hara = Green

Nila = Blue

Gulabi = Pink

Zambla = Purple

Kala = Black

Safed = White

Elephant, Giraffe, Eagle

Source: "International Game for Brownies", Trefoil New - April 2006 

How to play:

1. Everyone stands in a 
circle with one person in the middle. This person points at one girl and says either ‘elephant, giraffe or eagle’.

2. The girl they are pointing at and the girls on either side must act out whichever animal was chose.

3. If any of these three girls gets their action incorrect (or do it too slowly) they sit down. 
4. The game continues skipping over the girl that is sitting down so the person being pointed at may have a new neighbour to work with.

5. The last person standing is the winner.

Actions:

Elephant – The middle girl holds arm out in front of face as trunk. The girls on each side, hold up their arms to the middle girl, creating a half circle. These are the ears. 

Giraffe – The middle girl holds her arms above her head to be the long neck and head. The girls on either side have their hands and arms pointing down to the ground away from centre person to be the legs.

Eagle – The middle girl makes a beak shape with her hands in front of her face. The girls on each side, use one arm (away from the centre girl) to make moving wing motions.