Number Games

We're on holidays at the moment but I thought I'd note down some number themed games for future reference!

There are some good ones on Activity Village including
Concentration, which we've played before
and Beat That, which we were going to play recently but didn't get around to

Anything with dice would work out your number skills -  how about
The Mars Bar Game
or the ever-popular Beetle Drive

This looks like a fun card game

Or you could play one of our favorites, Gypsy Wants! to play this with numbers:
You need at least 2 teams with at least 3 in each team (or more if you have full sixes!)
Number the players in each team.
A leader then calls out, "Gypsy wants the number of...." eg. "number of wheels on a car" and the person with that number has to run down. The first person to Gypsy wins a point (or a counter)


I suggest writing a list before you start unless you can think of things easily on the spot!
If the game seems too easy, try bigger numbers, eg. number of days in a week would need 3 plus 4 or 6 plus 1 to run down together.

If you have other fun number games, let me know in the comments :)

We've got some exciting things happening in the Summer term, can't wait to get back!

Brownie Computer Badge

This is an interactive post for our Brownies completing the Computer badge! If there are any leaders who would like the worksheet that goes with this, please let me know.

Welcome Brownies!

Please read the Web Safe Code on your sheet and sign it.
Go to the Brownie website at www.girlguiding.org.uk/brownies.

Find someone famous who has been a Brownie

Which badge has a dolphin on it?

Write the answers on your sheet.




Show a leader how to save a site as a bookmark
Go to scrapcoloring.com/first-name-coloring-page

Type your name into the box which says "Second line" and click "Submit Query"

Colour in your name! We will print it out later.
Save your work (get a leader to check)

Go to Google www.google.com and search for one of the following:

* your favourite pop star
* a historical figure
* a sport you are interested in
* a country you would like to visit

Write something about it on your sheet.


Read about computer viruses and be careful when using the internet!
A computer virus is a small program which spreads from one computer to another and stops your computer working properly.
A virus is most easily spread by attachments in emails. This is why you should never click an attachment if you don’t know who sent you the email. You can protect your computer by making sure you have an anti-virus program and by not downloading anything from places you don’t trust.

Please leave me a comment!

If you have time and your sheet has been checked, head back to the Brownie website and have a go at some of the games.

Well done!
Flat Brownie

World Cultures Badge

The last few weeks we have been working on our World Cultures badge. We completed a little scrap book which had information about our culture (Scottish) and we had to fill out a food diary for a week. We wrote down something we ate each day, where in the world we would expect to eat that food (like, pizza in italy), and also if the food came in a packet, where the packet said the food was grown.
Lots of fruits and vegetables in supermarkets come from a long way away!

We played some games from other countries:
Dollar, Dollar (this is good fun)
Dutch Shoe Game (this was a hit too!)

and we coloured some pretty japanese paper dolls

We hopefully will be able to use the computers in our meeting place this week, so we will look up some Guiding uniforms in other countries, there are lots of pictures here.

Happy World Thinking Day!

Pack Holiday 2012 - Science

Last year's Pack holiday had a theme of science! We chose experiments from the excellent Sensational Science challenge resource and had leader and room names based around science.
Our leaders were Elements:
Susium, Shivium, Myrium

and our dorms were space -themed:
Enterprise, Atlantis and Columbia

We dyed some shirts, did lots of floating and sinking experiments, went on a glow stick trail, played a lot of games, ate tasty food, washed all of our own dishes, had an archery lesson, created pizzas, made lip balm, sang a few songs and slept a little!

Hello!

Hi!

Sorry there weren't many posts last term, everyone was very busy!

Here's a look at some things we did recently

Busy Summer!

Hello all.

Exciting non-Brownie news is our ex Young Leader, Jodi, is a young mayor at the Olympic Village! She's blogging about it here.

Another blog we're following over the summer is NeverSeconds This blog was all over the news just before the summer holidays because the girl VEG (or Martha) was temporarily banned from taking photos of her school dinners because the media was going mad at the dinner ladies which upset some people. Social media is crazy though, as soon as it got around the news that it had been banned, literally millions (7 million and counting) of people started viewing the site about a Scottish Girl's school dinners! As bonkers as it all was, Martha set up a just giving site to put in her £50 she was given for a magazine using photos from her blog. Visitors to the site have then (so far) donated over £100,000 to a (Scottish) charity called Mary's Meals which provides school meals to children who really need them. Social media is scary and powerful but it can do good things! In this case they've donated enough to build a new School kitchen in Malawi.  She's on summer hols, like us, at the moment but other people are sending in their pictures of school meals.

We're well into our summer holiday here, and soon it will be time to go on camp! Kestrel is going on a camp with 100 Brownies and Guides from all over Scotland at the beginning of August, then our Brownies are going on Pack holiday at the very end of the school hols. Kestrel will be completing her pack holiday license there!

I'll post up some camp posts afterwards, don't want to spoil any of the activities for anyone who might happen to come across the blog before it happens. Let's just say Kestrel has been buying a lot of socks!

Hope you're all having a lovely summer! I'm having a good one despite all of the rain...

FB

Nearly end of term!

Hello everyone!

Not many posts over the last few weeks because we've not been doing anything unusual..! We have 6 girls being enrolled next week, so they've been working towards that. Older girls have been doing handbook work and pack holiday planning and we've been trying to learn some new songs :)

At our last meeting we had an infestation of ants in our hall!! There was surprisingly little screaming but it meant we couldn't sit on the floor all evening. I hope they've gone next week when we have the parents visiting for the enrollments!

More about enrollments and pack holiday planning next time :)

FB

Jubilee Beacon

Kestrel and some Brownies

getting started

 

 

 

 

 

Fiiiiire!

11 of our Brownies, Brown Owl and Kestrel went with a bus full of other Brownies and Guides to the Jubilee Beacon last night. It was very exciting! We sang a lot of songs and learnt a few new ones. Our Brownies were still singing on the walk back to the bus!
My new favourite song is Alive, Alert, Awake

Artist Badge

Three new Brownies last week!! We sent some postcards around the local schools to try and get some more. There will hopefully be another showing up next week too :)

Lately we've been working on the Artist badge
 We made Easter cards before the Easter hols, and coloured mandalas with only three colours (nice link to a page with lots of printable sheets here) and made a picture of our own choice.

Last week at our meeting we finished off our activities.
First, we split everone up into red, blue or yellow team. We don't have even sixes at the moment but there were 12 girls so we just mixed everyone up. Then we played Gypsy wants (Colour Version) I tried to find an online link to this game but it must be called something different, so I'll create a new post with both!

We then spent most of the rest of the meeting making collages of ourselves. We stuck with the colours we were given at the start of the meeting, so were only allowed to use that colour, black or white. Kestrel, Merlin and Brown owl were then mixed colours!

I especially like the hair of the one on the bottom right!! This worked out really well as an activity -  each colour at their own table so they couldn't try to use EVERYTHING in our craft box. Ended up with some really creative pictures to cover our notice board :)

Postcard Display

Here are most of our postcards from the exchange! We had a few more which didn't fit onto the map, and more strings, but Kestrel forgot to take a picture of the full display before taking it off the wall at the last meeting.

We printed the map from National Geographic's Education site. They have some tools to make massive poster maps, but what we did was make a '1 page printable map', saved it as pdf, then printed it using the 'poster' option of Adobe Reader, Scaling it up 250% so that it fit on 2 rows of 4 A4 portrait sheets. This was a good size for us!

We had a lovely time participating in the exchange, we all got to try out our reading skills (some of the place and people's names were difficult!) and see some lovely postcards from other units around the world :)

Gypsy Wants

Gypsy Wants

minimum 2 teams of 3.
Equipment needed - some way to keep score (we give out counters), list of objects

Split into even teams and number each member.

A leader at the other end of the hall sits on a chair with a list of objects. She then calls a person and object. Eg. "Gypsy wants number 2 to bring her a hat". The first member down to Gypsy gets a point. The team with the most points at the end wins!

A list of things:
A pen/pencil
A watch (usually has to ask a leader for this)
A Brownie Sash/Handboook
A girl with... earrings, aged 7/8/9/10, with long hair, with a brother, blue eyes etc.
A shoe/sock (depending how we feel, we specify the sock has to be off the foot!)
The colour of Brown Owl's car
A jacket/scarf/hat
"Lucky" (one of our soft toy mascots)
Their whole six (holding hands to get the point)

I really advise having a list, it's hard to think of things on the spot!
 
If you know this game under another name, please let me know.

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Gypsy wants (colour version)

Teams of 3 (can be adjusted depending on numbers)
in each team, have red, blue and yellow. It is useful to have stickers so Gypsy can check they're not cheating.

This time tell the teams that Gypsy is going to call out an item, and the person who is the same colour as that item has to run down. Same as above, first to Gypsy gets a point.
eg. if  'grass' was called, the green member would have to run down.
This opens up possibilities for mixing colours, as 2 team members have to run for green, orange and purple. And Brown was the last!

A list of things:
sky, sea, blueberries, blue bird, jeans, Brown Owl's car, strawberries, cherries, post box, lips, tomatoes, lemon, giraffe (actually there was some discussion about the colour of a giraffe), banana, butter, custard, sun, cheese, orange, fire (accepted r, y, or), pumpkin, cheese, fanta, tigers, nemo, green, grass, broccoli, crocodile, celery, lime, frog, purple, blackcurrants, plum, grapes, lavender

You could also have teams of 6 with each a different colour, or black and white. If you try this please let me know how it goes!

Police Visit

Brown Owl arranged with the local police station that we went for a visit! The community officer doesn't normally work at the time we have Brownies, so thank you to him for rearranging for us :)

We had a tour of the station, got locked in the cells, learnt about interview rooms (and the big red panic button), tried on the heavy, heavy uniform and had a go in the police van! Both Kestrel and Merlin took some pictures, so here's a selection...

did you know the toilet only flushes from the outside?

these 2 asked about 40 questions each during the hour we were there!

this is everyone except Merlin

All of the equipment is heavy

usually only one person is in the back there, but we can take 6 Brownies away at once!

Quick activity

I'm not sure where on the internets I read this activity, but thank you whoever it was!

Kestrel is part of the Edinburgh county team for Together 2012 - a camp for Brownies and Guides aged 8-12. This camp is going to be a lot of fun, it's 2 nights indoors and 2 outdoors, we will get to meet Brownies and Guides from all over Scotland and get to visit Netherud.

6 Brownies and 6 Guides from across Edinburgh are getting to go, but most of them don't know us, or each other, so we had a get-to-know-you/information evening a few weeks ago. Everyone was squashed in a little room with all of the parents, coffee, tea and juice, name badges, a chocolate fountain which didn't work (Kestrel was in charge of that, oops) and 3 of the 4 Edinburgh leaders who are going on the camp!

It was lovely meeting everyone and the parents, let's hope they are all still happy about going! The meeting was only for an hour, but there was a little ice-breaker activity for the girls: a marshmallow tower building competition!

There are suggestions on the internet to do this with marshmallows and spaghetti, but this version used cocktail sticks. There were about 10 marshmallows and 20 cocktail sticks per group and they had about 10 minutes to make the tallest tower which stood up by itself!

One of the groups had an interesting technique of breakign up the marshmallows and having some sort of sticky goo tower, it came second inn the end (just!). It's more difficult than itt looks!

here is the winner

 

PS the chocolate fountain wasn't a total disaster, it turned into a chocolate fondue instead!

World Guiding - International Camp

As part of our World Guiding badge, we had to

Talk with someone who has been abroad with Girlguiding UK

Our ex-young leader (now a Leader with Guides) went on an International camp to Hong Kong during the Christmas holidays, and she kindly agreed to come along and chat with us about it, and she brought loads of things to show us!

The postcard below is actually from Vietnam, it's one of our exchange swaps, we were talking about them at the same time :) We actually had a Hong Kong exchange, so we were able to see on the map (I'll post that some other time) where it was in the world!

Cool camp blanket! International camping sounds like a lot of fun, but they tried lots of strange food, not sure I could manage that. We each got given one of the tartan friendship pins, since there were some left over.

It was great having someone different to chat to during the meeting, and the Brownies all had lots of interesting questions and comments. Thank you!!

Odd Post

Merlin just sent me a bunch of photos, so here's a good one from the Christmas party! More posts to come soon :)

Thinking Day

Happy World Thinking Day!

We had a lovely World Guiding meeting this week, photos to appear soon :)

Hello to our exchange friends!

If any of you are our postcard exchange friends, please leave a comment to say hello :)

In our last session at Brownies we started work on our World Guiding badge - we sang a song about Brownies around the world and started work on friendship circles (a ring of paper dolls). We also played Gypsy Wants and sang Who stole the cookie and finished off with Squeeze. Squeeze is our imaginary friend and stays with a different Brownie each week. He is small enough to fit in a pocket and enjoys chocolate and naps. The Seconder who took him home gets to keep Squeeze for two weeks since we have a week off due to school holidays!

I will put a picture up here of our postcard display once they have all arrived - we are still waiting for a few :)

FB

Some cards!

Postcard exhange: Into the post

 The international stamps had Roald Dahl's Matilda on them..

 The UK cards were the Olympic 2012 Logo

 

All went in this postbox on Saturday! It's a different part of town from where Brownies meet so it's safe to tell you! :)

 Look out for some of the cards we have received so far.... Kestrel has made us a big map to stick them all onto.

FB