Beautiful People

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! 

Be Proud of Who You Are

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).

Label: 
1. Ears 
2. Nose 
3. Tail 
4. Fur
5. Eyes 
6. Hands/Feet (paws)

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!

There isn't just one way to look beautiful

Our journey through session one of Free Being Me using the 7-10years activity book.

Welcome and take part pledge

After introducing the badge and topic, everybody needs to say a pledge that they will participate, share their opinions and have fun. We decided to do this with somewhat of a tongue-twister of a pledge and clapping game. Each week since, it has become more and more simplistic!


Guidelines

To create our group guidelines, three scribes wrote down every suggestion the Brownie Guides had and then the unit decided on which were their top choices.

These are the group guidelines the girl's chose:

Pot of Gold

If you can believe it, we were already behind schedule at this point in the program, so I decided to skip this activity. I have it all prepared if there is time during another meeting - although this does not seem likely. 


The Princess List

From the activity book:

Image credit

In Patrols, the girl's began by drawing and labelling the physical features of popular fairytale princesses. There were two Cinderella's, a Tinkerbell and one other princess. Can you guess who it is?

Cinderella

Tink

Once the drawings were complete and labelled, we came together as a unit to create a list of the similarities between the features of the four princesses.

Examples:

Then we worked through the discussion questions. The question they had a lot of difficulty with was, what other places you can see this princess look? Not one girl thought of media/celebrities, even with much prompting from Leaders and the parent helpers! Answers were along the lines of Disney-on-Ice, the opera, school and Disney land!

Despite the princess-look in the media confusion, the girl's were really great with the other questions and coming to the understanding that there is no such thing as perfect and lots of way to look beautiful.

Beauty Around the World

Excerpt from Free Being Me 7-10 years. Image credit.

I really loved this activity. I would read one of the sentences from above, eg. Somewhere in the world is it considered that big women are beautiful. The Brownies then had to decide whether this was true or false. Knowing that my girl's as I do, I knew that a few of them would follow the crowd. I had them stand in the middle of the room with their eyes closed. Each end of the hall had been designated as 'true' or 'false'. Once I read the statement, with their eyes closed the girl's needed to either step forward of backwards indicating which answer they felt was correct. From there, they opened their eyes and ran completely to their indicated side of the room. This worked really well in obtaining honest answers - which were really just guesses anyway!

Image credit

We are simulateouly running FBM with the Guides, using the 7-10 year program, with plans to complete 11-14 year program next year. For this activity, each round we mixed up the actions. Sometimes running to the signs at end of the hall, other times just pointed in the direction and also putting hands on heads for true and hands on hips for false. Variety worked well in keeping them focused.

We had an interesting talk with both groups discussing which facts were the most surprising and how beauty is seen differently around the world. Many parents mentioned to me that the girl's shared these facts with them at home.

Free Being Me Gallery

Rather than doing another drawing activity, we created the 'living gallery'. Each Brownie Guide took turns to mime an action, doing something they love to do eg. swimming, reading, walking the dog. Once the unit had correctly guessed the mime, that girl would then say, "I am swimming. I love my arms and legs because they help me move quickly through the water." 

This activity was really successful and i'm glad the drama activity was listed as an alternate activity. Some girl's even did a second mime, they enjoyed this so much!


Personal Challenge: Role Models

This was a take home activity to share a picture and information about a real-life role model. I printed the paperwork necessary and gave each girl a hard copy to write on. Only half the girl's remembered to bring theirs back the following week - which was what I suspected would happen. Most of the girl's wrote about their parents, but some chose teachers, other family members and one even chose another Brownie Guide in the unit!

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What were your successes and challenges in FBM session one?

The treasure inside of me

Rather than diving straight into Session One of Free Being Me, we began with one of the extra recommended activities, found on page 3 of the 7-10 year old Activity Book.

The cardboard boxes were purchased from Riot craft store for $3 each with the dimensions of the bases being approximately 15x15x15cm. I had considered using smaller boxes, but these were on sale, and have turned out to be much more suitable with the size of the notes being added.

During our first meeting of the term, each girl was given a box to decorate with coloured tissue paper and glue. Some girl's chose to cover every inch, while others didn't mind the brown cardboard showing through.

The layered tissue paper looks great and the girl's loved the range of colors available to create interesting patterns.

As this meeting was a couple of weeks ago, messages have already been added into many of the boxes. However, I won't be sharing them here until the end of term. It wouldn't be fair to post them before the girl's have a chance to read them!

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Have you made Treasure-Inside-Me boxes for Free Being Me? 
Did you do something else instead?

A new year

As we are quickly approaching the end of the summer holidays, I have been shopping for new supplies (badges, uniform, badge books) and meeting with other Leaders to organise the meetings for the new year of Brownie Guides. 

Term one is going to be skills based (knotting, first aid, compass work) in preparation for our term one camp, and term two will be spent working on the Free Being Me challenge. 

From the Free Being Me website:

What is Free Being Me? 

A one-of-a-kind programme! Through fun and interactive activities, children and young people learn that body confidence and self-esteem come from valuing their bodies, standing up to social pressures, and supporting others to be more body confident. By working together, leading others and speaking out, participants will be empowered to make a difference in their local and global communities.

All the resources for this program are available as a free download on the website, or alternatively you can purchase hard copies at your local Guide shop. I purchased the Leaders Guide, 7-10 years and 11-14 years packs for our Guide district to use. At $6.50 each book, I felt it was a worthwhile investment for empowering our youth - plus the books are great quality made from lovely thick paper.

Have your units commenced the Free Being Me challenge?