It is tough to make some meetings fun. We struggle with the talky meetings like the promise and law ones tend to be. We need to convey the message while still being fun. Brownies isn’t school.
- Girls First: Guide Together – Our Story
- Look for: The Brownie Promise Relay and The Brownie Law in Action activities. Also look for the Brownie Story (Needs a password – look for it under All About Guiding > All about Brownies.)
6:30 – Gathering game – Tag – whatever the first girl to arrive decided
6:40 – Directly into Brownie Ring (we’ll announce Circles next week)
6:55 – Program – Read the Brownie Story
7:00 – Four Stations with an Active Transfer (they have something fun to do that gets them moving between each station). The Beans Game should make the wiggles less of a problem. We’ll put the girls into the 4 groups that we think will be the circle groups next week.
7:05 Station 1 – I promise – everyone gets a copy of the Promise – we go through what it means to make a promise. What happens if you don’t keep your promise?
7:10 Beans to transfer to the next station.
7:12 Station 2 – Motto and Law – talk about what the two mean. Read through a couple of times. Then do a word scramble – have all the words on cards and the girls will organize them.
7:17 Beans to transfer to the next station.
7:20 Station 3 – Action Station! Silliness. Do the Animal Game – everyone has to silently be an animal (starfish, elephant, gorilla, snake, crab, dog, cat, bumblebee) and then we’ll talk about games at Brownies. What kinds of games do you want to play? How do we lead a game?
7:25 Beans to transfer to the next station.
7:30 Station 4 – Enrollment – Girls will be told about three different Enrollment themes from Becky’s Guiding Centre (Girls First wants girls to have choices). The Guiders are prepared to make them work. The girls will pick. (I personally hope for Toadstool or baking brownies – I HATE sparkles so much – my Owl team promises we can do the Wishing one without sparkles).
- A new batch of Brownies – we did this last year. The second-year girls will “mix up” the ingredients that are needed to be Brownies. The new Brownies will go into the OVEN to bake. Hopefully things will work out that they come out as real Brownies!
- We could make our wishes come true with a Wishing Star Enrollment. We’ll transform the gym into a cloud and star-filled sky. The second-year girls will take the new Brownies from their cloud over to the magic mirror where we’ll find out if they have the stuff to be real Brownies.
- Or we’ll act out the Brownie Toadstool story. Second year girls will Twist and Turn the first years to find out if they are real Brownies.
7:35 Beans to get everyone back to the big circle.
7:40 – Everyone back together for the BIG VOTE. Baking, vs Toadstool, vs Wishing Star. Also we need to decide on a game for next week. Girls will vote with their feet (Go to Snowy Owl if you want Wishing Star, Go to Brown Owl if you want Toadstool, or go to Tawny Owl if you want to Bake Brownies) – Abby can participate best in this sort of vote. Result – Tawny Owl was very popular and we are baking a new batch of Brownies. (Score – no sparkles!)
7:45 – Try out some of the games the groups came up with and pick the game options for next week (Dr. Mix Up and regular tag – because plain old tag felt left out of the myriad of other tags – toilet, chocolate, unicorn, bandaid, freeze…). Kids are funny.
7:50 – Our first campfire – Fire’s Burning, Black Socks, Ricky the Rock, Yogi Bear, Chinese Fan, and then Closings
7:55 Close.
Review – this was a great meeting. Talking was necessary, but there was movement to keep the wiggles at bay. The word scramble was fun – they liked it and it was achievable. It also helps that we’ve got a chill group of girls. I hope your meetings go well.