"Best night at Brownies EVER"

FOOD NIGHT!

This week, we decorated biscuits and made cocktails, mmmmmmmm.

WE also played Port and Starboard, we haven't done that for ages, and our newest Brownie was enrolled - we now have 13 Brownies, all enrolled! This is great news because this time last year we only had 3 and were thinking about having to close the unit

That's all I have to say... Brownies are on October holidays for the next 2 weeks and when we get back it's Halloween :)

Rugby World Cup 2011

Hello!

This week  Brown Owl was away on holidays, so Kestrel and Merlin were in charge of us for the evening and we had the Rugby World Cup!

This year the World cup was hosted by New Zealand, so first we decorated some Koru pendants. (From the guiding magazine). We then stuck these onto some cardboard which Kestrel had cut into ovals, and made a hole in the top to make them into necklaces. Very nice :)

We then split into 3 teams for the competition - first each team were given their name (Italy, USA and South Africa) and we had to go to our correct flag. USA was easy but we weren't sure about Italy and South Africa at first...

We played a relay race where we had to throw balls backwards (because that's what they do in Rugby), and the 'Stop game'. This is one of my most favourite games - each Brownie is given 3 counters (we use old smartie lids). The Brownies run around, and a leader walks about the room. At some point, the leader puts her hand up in a 'stop' sign, but doesn't say anything, and the last person to stop loses a counter. After a few stops, the groups gather back and count how many counters they have left as a team. The team with the most left is the winner.

 We also played the spaceships game, where counters are spread across the room and as teams we have to collect as many counters as possible and bring them back to their circle (chalked on the floor), but we can only pick up one at a time!

Scoring is  a bit complicated in Rugby - you get points for winning, drawing, and extra points for all sorts of things.. Instead we made it simple by making 3 points for the team in first place, 2 for second and 1 for third.

In the end, South Africa and USA were joint second with 17 points but Italy were the winners with 21!

Denmark

Hello Friends!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but Kestrel doesn't have internet at home yet and she is the one who types up all these entries for me.

I've been visiting Europe recently... we had a lovely evening learning about Denmark from one of the Guides - she went there for a big Jambourette in the summer, and to raise money she was hosting theme nights and we each got a badge from it.

So we learnt about what Denmark is famous for  (Hans Christian Anderson, who wrote the Ugly Duckling and the Little Mermaid; Lego and Lurpak Butter). We looked up the country on our map and we can see it's not very far from Edinburgh really!

We also played a game and decorated some mermaids. It was great fun, and we all have a new badge and I have some mermaid friends :)

FB

We are BACK

Brownies are back!

This week we were mainly working on our handbooks - a lot of our girls enrolled at the end of last term so we have plenty of pages to work through. Everyone came back, except from our old Brownie who is moving up to Guides when they start back, but we recruited a new girl who moved from one of the other packs.

Other than handbooks we played a couple of games:
A game to learn people's names - we had to go round the circle and say our name and something we like, and remember everyone else's..
eg. "My name is Brown Owl and I like Cats"
"My name is Flat Brownie and I like chocolate, this is Brown Owl and she likes cats"
We all managed it, and it was surprising the girls who managed to remember lots without help from the rest of us!

We also played Johnny Went to the Zoo, which is a team game - each member of the team has a name like Johnny, Mummy, Daddy, Elephant, Giraffe, Monkey... and a leader tells a story about Johnny and his day at the zoo. Whenever your name is mentioned you have to run and the first person back to their team gets a point.

We have lots of fun things planned for this term, including learning more songs. Our current group of girls seem to enjoy singing more than others we've had recently so we need to dust off our song books and get learning some new ones. This site has loooads of songs if you're ever looking for any... I want to try Flea Fly Flo!

Look out for me from an exotic location next week....

Flat Brownie

Still Summer

 We're actually most of the way through our summer holidays here in Scotland! Only 2 weeks left of School hols, which means are Brownies are back in just under 3 weeks. Our leaders are meeting on Monday to plan out activites for the new term - hopefully something good. I'd like to have a go at the Postcard Exchange and maybe we could do our World Guiding or World Traveller badge.

I'm also really excited about Halloween because we didn't have enough Brownies for a party last year! Lots of our Brownies made their promise at the end of the Summer term, so we'll have some fun working through our Adventure books and hopefully have some interesting guests like Grandpa Frank, who came to talk to us about Elephants as part of our Friend to Animals badge (we did the Endangered animals part, which included making Milk Bottle Elephants and adopting an Elephant from the WWF).

I hope you're all having a lovely summer :)

FB

Milk Bottle Elephants

A few months ago a leader at another unit told me about Milk Bottle Elephants. There's some excellent instructions at the link back there but basically what you do is cut a plastic milk bottle half way down, cut a semi-circle out of the bottom of each side, then decorate!


The Surrey East crew decorated theirs with tissue paper, but we decided to turn it into a 3-week project by first covering them with papier mache (newspapers and watery pva glue), then painting them, then decorating them with feathers, tissue paper and sequins. Circles of tissue paper make excellent 'hats'.

We really enjoyed this activity - we all got really messy the first 2 weeks with glue and newspaper and paint, and we had plenty of time to decorate this week. Don't they look excellent?
We're going to use them as part of our Friend to Animals badge. We're having a visitor next week who is going to talk to us about Elephants :)

We also enrolled 6 new Brownies tonight! It's very exciting because this time last year we only had 3 Brownies, and we're now up to 13 which is excellent. We invited all the parents, played parachute games and then sang a few songs.

Only 2 weeks to go until end of term - Scottish schools end for the summer at the end of June.
Bye for now,

FB

Craft time!

What can you make with milk bottles and newspapers?

We painted them yesterday and next week we are going to finish them off, I can't wait, they will look excellent.

This week we were going to play jump the blob, which is the old favourite of a beanbag on the end of a string which is spun round in a circle - you have to jump over it and if it hits you, you lose a life. Some of our Brownies are really good at this game and the beanbag wore out. We made a new one but someone forgot to bring it to Brownies!! Instead we played a ball game called drop it catch it. In this game everyone stands in a circle and someone (usually a leader but sometimes a Brownie) throws the ball to Brownies at random. The thrower calls out either "drop it!" or "catch it!" and you are supposed to do the opposite. Seems easy but we usually have 3 lives each and it still doesn't go on as long as you might expect.

Two new Brownies arrived this week too! One moved from another unit, and the other just moved into the area but hasn't been a Brownie before so they are both a bit older. That's good because we have LOTS of new, young Brownies at the moment, it's nice to have a few new older ones. In fact, we are enrolling 6 girls next week - we are inviting the parents and are going to play parachute games outdoors, so hopefully it will be nice weather :)

I'll be back next week with some pained Elephants and some newly enrolled Brownies!!

FB