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?

Reindeer are better than people

To end the year, the Brownies had a pajama and movie night watching their current favorite movie, Frozen. They sang along with Anna, Elsa and Olaf and shouted, "He's a liar!" when Hans came on the screen. 

One of the best things about the end of the year is the sweet Christmas cards I receive from the girls. One of the handmade cards I received even included a drawing of a new badge. Isn't it great?!

Drawing dragons

Approximately half of the Brownie Guides are currently working on their Junior B.P. award, the peak achievement award for girls aged 7 years and older.

The award requires 12 challenges to be completed, two from each of the seven Fundamentals of the Australian Guide Program:

• Promise and Law
• Guiding Traditions
• Service
• Outdoors
• World Guiding
• Patrol System
• Leadership Development

One of the Promise and Law challenges is to "think about something you are good at and share your talent with your Patrol. It may be music, cooking, writing or something else."

Not every girl selects this particular challenge, however those who have completed it over the past few years have chosen a great range of talents to share, including telling jokes, craft, baking and playing hockey. 

The latest talent that was shared was extremely unique and you may have guessed by the title of this post that it was... drawing dragons!

Miss 10 years (with a little Leader prompting), led her Patrol through a dragon conversation, discussing appearances of dragons in books and movies and the various types and their features, strengths and weaknesses. She then went on to teach the Patrol how she draws dragons and then assisted them to create their own. It was definitely an original topic and her Patrol had a great time working together for 40 minutes, before I finally had to stop them to do other activities. I was really impressed with how they worked together - it was the most cohesive i've even seen them!

There were over 20 dragons drawn, here are the few I managed to capture in a photo.

Bath bombs

Last week we made coconut scented bath bombs using chocolate moulds and ice cube trays. They take a minimum of four fours to set, so the girls took them out of the moulds this week. They looked lovely, especially once they were placed in glass jars wrapped with ribbon and a printed label. 

You may notice the flower shaped bath bombs in the photo below are the same shape as the melted crayons we made for our craft stall. Those moulds were definitely a great purchase!

If you are interested in making your own, we used this recipe from Bakingdom.