The Brown Owl and I officially joined this pack at the same time, September if 2014. Back when there were only three girls and a huge risk of closing. Since then, we’ve always had low numbers but considerably better than that. It’s honestly felt like this pack has grown around her. It’s also the pack that I did my ALQ with so its definitely very important to my journey. But that’s not the point of this post.
The point of this post is the fact that we haven’t properly had a cupboard sort out in the five years we’ve been there. I’m sure all guiders know that the cupboard becomes a collection of chaos. Brown Owl, over the summer and the beginning of term, did go through the cupboard and along with the stuff we use regularly (paper, pens, glue, balls, hoops, baking things) there was a collection of things we have never used in the five years we’ve been here. This included a badge making set, that if doesn’t belong to the district, I’m going to buy off the pack, a collection of hama beads and peg boards that we’re going to use next term, and some sports nets from a very old Sainsbury Active Kids voucher book that we’re going to keep two of and give the rest to the district.
Moving these things from the cupboard is certainly going to give us some added space which will definitely come in handy. The cupboard has been a bit of a squeeze so having a bit more space to spread out will be great.
September brings with it the start of my favourite time of the year, the time of Pumpkin Spice, and changing leaves, and the return to school for a new year after a long break. I was told many times that when I finished university I would stop using the school calendar as my calendar but life as a Brownie leader keeps me in that cycle. I’ve been pretty inactive on this blog for the last couple of years, not posting at all in eleven months.
This new term and new school year is even more of a new start for Guiding because it marks the start of the new programme. I have to admit that initially I wasn’t too sure about the new programme, it seemed confusing and I didn’t see what was wrong with the old one. However, now that I’ve worked out properly how the new programme works I think I am going to like it. I’m definitely someone who learns this sort of thing by doing it so I’ll see properly how I find it in the next few weeks.
In order to help the girls learn more about how the new programme works, my friend from another Brownie pack called Laughing Owl, gave me a build a beatle type game but instead of a beatle they built the new programme things.
The game was relatively simple. What number you roll depends what you get and you have to get all of them to complete the game.
One = interest badge
Two = skills builder
Two again = four hours of unit activities.
Three = theme award.
Four = six theme awards
Five = Gold challenge
Six = brownie gold award
To add a little competition to the game, I split the girls into two teams, so that the ‘winner’ was the team that had all their players having all the programme parts.
The girls definitely seemed to enjoy the game, and all agreed that it helped with making sense of it which is always a positive.
At the end of last term we had three girls leave, two who were ten and moving on to guides and one who was moving to another city. This took out numbers down to twelve, which is back in the dangerous zone. Thankfully we had two girls join, one who is definitely joining, one who came to see if she liked it and wanted to join. Both seems to enjoy themselves which is always a great.
I love this new year feeling and look forward to getting into the swing of Brownies again.
People who know me in real life will know that I’m extremely proud of the part of Britain that I come from and love many many things about it. Last week, we did another couple of parts of the Culture badge in the meeting and this meant doing a couple of activities based around Devon.
I was really excited about the activities especially since I had been away at Uni for a year, so it was a great way to emerge myself back into local culture. The activity I was running was making a dish from your local culture. As soon as I saw this activity as an option, I knew I wanted to do Cream Teas.
Before we let the girls loose with Cream and Jam, I gave them a bit of information firstly about the Devon Flag. The flag is relatively new and it was exciting to learn about it and to share that knowledge. I have a 5×3 flag that was on my wall when I was away at Uni, which I took in to show them.
I explained to the girls that the people were jealous that Cornwall had a flag, so they wanted to have their own. A competition was sent out and a lot of different designs were sent forward, pretty much all of which used the colours green, black and white. It is said that green and white are colours that represent devon because they are Devon’s Rugby team, Plymouth Argyle and Exeter Uni’s colours. But also the colours have meaning within the county. White represents the salt spray from our two coast lines, Black represents the high and windswept moors and Green represents the lushious rolling hills.
Then it was time to explain to the girls the difference between a Devon Cream Tea and a Cornish Cream Tea. When I was researching this, I learn that eating bread with jam and cream is something that had been happening in Devon for at least 1000 years but the first recording of the time cream tea in terms of scone, jam and cream is only from the 1960s. I explained to the girls that for a Devon Cream Tea, you put the cream on first and then the jam but for a Cornish Cream Tea, you put the jam on first and then the cream.
I said to them that they were going to have a scone each, readily cut in half and that they were to have one-half Devon and one-half Cornish and see which they preferred after eating them.
The girls seemed to have great fun making their cream teas, and they definitely seemed to enjoy the eating part. Afterwards, we did the vote. There were 10 Brownies of our usual 12 there that night and the vote went like this
Devon: 3
Cornish: 6
No difference: 1
What we learnt, concerningly, was that our Brownies seem to have a strong Cornish leaning when it comes to Cream Teas. It did mean that I wasn’t outnumbered and booed out of the county when I admitted I also prefer it the Cornish way.
One of the best things about being a leader within Girl Guiding is seeing the growth of girls throughout their time with Brownies. The strongest example of this came quite recently. I had been leading an activity where the girls had to write a poem where the first letter of each line spelt either HARVEST or AUTUMN and then they were finished the had to read the poems out to the new girls who had been doing pre-promise activities while we were writing.
The girls read them with confidence, reading through each line about what autumn and harvest means, talking about farmers and changing leaves and rain. I was worried about Girl S having to read out her poem. Girl S has anxiety, about a year and a half ago was struggling to recite her promise during her ceremony. (See this post about that night) Last week, when she had to read our her poem, she didn’t hesitate. She stood up straight with her piece of paper in hand and read through her poem with no trouble.
I’m not kidding, I almost cried with how proud I was of her. She has come so far in such a short space of time. Her anxiety probably hasn’t left, but she has got to a point where Brownies is a safe space for her where she can talk to the group and read for them without having to worry or not do it.
It’s worth mentioning that Girl S is now a sixer and she has been doing a wonderful job of looking after the new girls not only in her six but also in our other six.
For almost the entirety of this year, I haven’t been on this blog. There’s been a number of reasons for this. My Guiding journey was at a bit of a standstill. When I moved away to Uni, I did join a pack there, but I only went to a few meetings because studying for a Master’s while having a Chronic Illness does not allow for much extra activity. Unfortunately, this meant from about February until around July, I was out of Guiding completely. It was definitely the right decision to make but lord knows I missed being a part of it.
Guiding was never something I would be able to give up long-term though and when I moved back home, I was so glad to be able to return to the pack I had left a year before. There were a number of new girls from the time I left and there were a few I knew who had left, but I felt that I slotted back into the pack well.
The first meeting of the new term was wonderful. Not only did it remind me of everything I love about Girl Guiding but also it saw the pack grow from five girls to eleven. We had six new Brownies, and this week we have another joining. That takes our pack up to 12, the minimum recommended for a Brownie pack. We’ll be in safe ground which is wonderful. The planning meeting after the first pack meeting of term was great fun and I am hugely looking forward to a lot of the activities we are doing this term.
I’ve had to take a step back with some of the activities because of my health. I won’t be attending any of the additional activities, such as district or division activities on non-Brownie evenings and some of the more intense evenings – such as our visit to Clip and Climb – I won’t be able to go to. I will, however, be throwing myself into the week to week activities. Seeing the pack grow and the girls grow within it, feels me with such pride and is something I could not bear to be away from for too long.
Now that I have my blog up to date with the most interesting activities we have done this term – or at least the most interesting activities I was there for – I can talk about the sad thing that is occurring this week. Due to me returning to Uni in September a good 250 miles away from where I currently live, I am having to leave this Brownie Pack.
This is a really emotional time for me. I have been with this pack since just before I graduated from University the first time around. I joined in September of 2014 when the Brown Owl was also completely new and the pack was at risk of closure due to only having three girls. It’s been a long and wonderful journey being a leader at this pack. While it was not the pack that begun my guiding journey, I thoroughly believe it is the pack that turned me into a Brownie Guider.
My first pack was wonderful but there was somewhat of a rush to get my ALQ completed and I had at least one argument with the Brown Owl of the pack, which added to Uni stress did not make for a confident leader in me. Joining the pack I am currently at changed everything. Although the pack is old, it felt brand new because the Brown Owl and I had to build it up. Rather than being in a pack that had 20-odd girls and 5 leaders and didn’t really need me, I was now a part of a desperate pack that needed all the help it can get.
The Brown Owl at this pack has been wonderfully supportive. We may not necessarily have agreed on every single issue but we always found a way to compromise to find the best thing for the girls involved. We saw the pack grow from three girls up to twelve and drop back to nine. We’ve seen the pack gain a better connection with the church we meet in and we’ve seen girl after girl grow in confidence and as a person through the activities they do and the friends they made. The Brown Owl here helped me to better understand the Adult Leadership Qualification and work through it at my own pace rather than just trying to get everything signed off. Although this meant it took over two years, I was able to say within myself that I was a competent and confident leader by the time I had finished it. This Brown Owl also encouraged me to do all four modules, rather than just 1-3 which is definitely what I wanted to do.
From this pack, I have seen a number of great leaders and young leaders; Brown Owl, Snowy Owl, Ladybird, Squirrel, Fluffy Owl, Rainbow Owl, Cutie Owl, Eagle Owl and Curly Owl. Many have come and gone due to university, work or school but Fluffy Owl, Curly Owl and Eagle Owl will be remaining with Brown Owl.
Fluffy Owl is 16 now, she was 14 when she joined us and has been working on her DofE and is now working on her Young Leadership Qualification. I’m sad that I’m not going to be there to see her complete it but I have all the confidence that she will do so. In her two years with us, I think she has become more confident working with the girls and coming up with the activities and she is bound to go so far with her Guiding journey.
Eagle Owl is a PhD student who somehow finds time in all of that to also be a Brownie Guider. She came to us already having her qualification and like me is firmly set into her Guiding journey. Her time with us has been short, she joined not long after Thinking Day, but she has slotted into the pack perfectly, having some wonderful and fun ideas for activities. She is no doubt going to continue to be a brilliant leader.
Curly Owl has only been with us a couple weeks and I’ve not really had the chance to get to know her, but she is new to guiding from what I do know and she seems very enthusiastic and is definitely really good with the girls and that’s what is important. It’ll be a shame not to see where her guiding journey takes her and I really hope she starts her ALQ soon because she is bound to be a wonderful leader.
The girls we have seen come and go have varied from the incredibly shy to the type that makes you wonder if the teenage gene came a bit early but there is not one of them that has not left an impression on me. Girl R who hit her head hard on the floor when she dropped dramatically. Girl P who did not like me shortening her name. Girl M who got very attached to me and tried to teach me some Polish word. Girl T who started very shy but slowly came out of her shell. Girl M2 who’s Mum had the same illness as me. Girl R2 who’s sister was Squirrel. Girl A who was clearly bored of Brownies by the time she was 9. Girl C who could be a nightmare or the sweetest girl you meet. Girl N who’s currently very attached to me. Girl Z who wouldn’t stop talking about her first communion. And so on and so on. I would be here all day if I were to mention them all. They have helped me grow and I like to think that I have helped them grow in return.
Since joining this pack, though, it’s been so much more than this pack. I have become a part of a proper Guiding community. While the district is a bit of a mess, with changing boundaries and irregular meetings and packs that are difficult to get hold of, I can honestly say I have made some firm guiding connections and there are a number of people I am sincerely grateful to have shared this experience with. It is other packs as well, packs I have helped out on holidays with, girls who I maybe only saw for a couple of days but remember me and still call out their silly nickname for me if they see me even though they are in guides now.
It’s also the place where I learnt about Senior Section and Rangers. The place where I was able to do badges once again and study within myself what it meant to be a young woman and a member of girlguiding. I have made a lot of progress on my Look Wider and I desperately hope to finish it before I leave in September. Wish me luck.
Joining this pack, joining this community has made be who I am as a guider and while three years may not seem long for many people, it’s the majority of my guiding journey so far and it is something I will always be grateful for and will remain sad to have to step away from.
That being said I am excited to be able to move on. While I wish I could take the pack with me, I am glad to be moving away from my home city, my home county and taking myself on the next step of my life’s journey. I’m going to study a Master’s in English Literature and no I don’t have a clue what I want to do after it. Who knows where I’ll be in a year or what I’ll be doing. But I know for sure I will still be a Brownie Guider.
When it came to taking the girls to the quay this summer term, I knew I wanted to organise the trip. The quay in my city is a really beautiful area that I love to spend time at. I created three pages of activity sheets for the girls to complete as we went for our walk around. I ended up spending quite a lot of time on this, involving me going to the
I ended up spending quite a lot of time on this, involving me going to the quay a couple of times. Page one was what needed the most work, at the quay I took some pictures from obscure angles for them to work out what was, and answer questions relating to. Page two was a checklist to tick off if they have seen things such as a paddleboat, a black dog, a person with a buggy, etc and tagged onto the bottom of that was random questions such as ‘name three types of birds you have seen’. Page three was a free for all, it was split into four sections titled “three different shape leaves”, “ice cream”, “a bird”, and “a bridge” which they had to draw.
The evening ended up being a lot of fun. There were some disputes from the girls, such as “But I’ve seen a dog surely it counts,” / “it says a black dog, that dog is white” and “Why would there be an umbrella in the sun?” / “Look over the tables” but they seemed to enjoy the scavenger hunt of different activities.
I want to take a moment to talk about how proud I am of one of my Brownies. Earlier this term she was due to do her Promise but she suffers from anxiety pretty badly. Now, I can relate to this and it breaks my heart to think of a child only 7 or 8 going through that sort of hell. She was scared about doing her promise in front of everyone and a lot of discussion went on between her parents and Brown Owl to try and find what was best for her. We even suggested that she could do her promise once all the Brownies had gone just in front of Brown Owl.
In the end she came to the meeting, albeit scared and upset, and her Dad spent some time in the meeting with her, and some time waiting outside of the meeting room while she joined in with the activities. In the end, she agreed to do her promise in front of everyone as long as she could whisper it. She did so, with us all there and her Dad watching from the doorway.
Once she had finished the promise and the law, without any prompting from the leaders, the girls started clapping. They were clearly so happy for her that she had been able to overcome that fear and do it anyway, and I was just so proud of all of them for supporting her in such a way.
This week, rather than meeting at the church hall, we took our girls to the local fire station. The Dad of girl R is a fireman so it had been relatively easy for Brown Owl to organise this trip to make finishing the Fire Safety badge more interesting. I figured the girls would enjoy the trip but I was surprised by just how much they seemed to love it. There was a point were girls J and C were bouncing up and down and telling us that this was the best trip ever.
During the evening, the girls were shown the firefighters uniform and the man leading the evening explained why they were so heavy and hot to wear. During this part of the evening, Brown Owl and I had the opportunity to try out the uniform. Putting them on in the middle of a heatwave was not ideal as everything is so large and heavy. Of course, this is completely necessary as it is to protect them from the smoke and fire. I found it almost impossible to even take a step with the boots on and they walk as though they are just normal boots. I already respected firefighters but I definitely gained a new level of respect seeing and learning everything up close.
The girls were given the opportunity to see the different parts of a Fire Engine and were taught all about why they are there and what they are used for. They even got the opportunity to get up into the Fire Engine and learn about how the firefighters act when they have to go to a call out.
Towards the end of the evening, we all got the opportunity to have a go with the hoses on the fire engine. This was great fun for Brownies and leaders alike. We were shown how to make the water faster or slower and we were aiming for a turned over rubbish bin and saw how the force of the water made it move.
This was a wonderful night and it was so great to see the girls really enjoying themselves as they learnt about it all and completed their Fire Safety badge. Honestly something I would recommend to all Brownie packs.
As someone who seems to flit between being very much a city girl to very much a country girl, the idea of camping with the Brownies was both terrified and exciting for me. No one in my current pack has a going away with licence so when we were invited by another pack to join then on a summer camp, it was important to me that our girls be offered the opportunity. My Brown Owl is of the belief that camping should be saved for guides, however, was willing to let our girls go if I was willing to go with them. I was.
Preparing for this Brownie Camp was worrisome, having never done a Brownie Camp before I was worried about leaving something important behind. I must have checked my kit list 5 times before I accepted that I had everything I needed. Important things that were packed included Dill, my small teddy Armadillo and Haribo. Despite all the fuss, I managed to get myself packed completely with four hours to go before I needed to leave, giving me time to do the boring, non-Guiding things I had to do that day.
Once I arrived at the pickup point, I was picked up and we drove to the campsite. The plan was for the leaders to get there early and get the tents up before the girls arrived. I had been camping only once before this trip and knew little to nothing about the process of putting up tents. It was not an easy feat but we got there in the end, with the help of the pack leader’s three-year-old daughter and a couple of Brownies who arrived early.
The camp was greatly enjoyable and I remain completely pro-camp for Brownies. I believe there is a difference between camp for Guides and camp for Brownies and both should have the option to do so. This was only my second time sleeping in a tent and I got considerably less sleep than I would’ve liked [although, more than another pack holiday I’ve been on]. I shared with Izzy (now Snowy Owl) and Rabbit who were young leaders for the pack we were going with. I was glad to be able to make friends with people around my age who were also in Guiding because it seems such a rarity for me.
The badges I bought at the camp ‘shop’
During the camp, the girls were working on the Circus Skills badge, which meant they got to do a number of fun activities like walking on skills, making juggling balls out of balloons and rice and learning to juggle with them and making balloon animals and flowers. This, of course, lead to a lot of popped balloons and leaders uncomfortable about the sounds.
One of the three girls from my pack, unfortunately, took ill and didn’t make it through all of the camp. It was worrying and sad to see her go from bubbly and excited to quiet and ill. I sat with her as we waited for her Mum and Nan to come get her though, and we spent the time talking about Youtube and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which I suffer from and her Mum had just been diagnosed with.
I had a lot of new experience at this camp, most of which were quintessentially camp experiences. I saw my first campfire and the difficulty that comes with trying to light one. Izzy and the other pack’s Barn Owl [yes that was confusing for the weekend] spend rather a long while trying to get it to light at all, but eventually, Barn Owl found a large branch and when that caught alight the fire continued for hours. Another new experience was camp fire songs which of course is a direct corrolation from the campfire itself.
The final quintessentially camp experience was rain. We were lucky that the rain didn’t come until the last night. But it came overnight and it poured and poured. The grass we were pitched on became saturated and the tent me, Izzy and Rabbit was not the only one to had leaked quick dramatically. Tired and grumpy girls, tired and grumpy leaders and pouring rain certainly is an interesting combination.
At this camp, I also learnt that mass making hot chocolate is done using a giant jug and that waking up to a Brownie bringing you tea is a delightful wake-up call.
Other things, I relearnt include that sleeping in a tent is really uncomfortable and that my sleeping bag is particularly loud when you move around a lot in the night. All in all, I would really love the opportunity to attend another Brownie Camp if I was invited.
The girls were given the opportunity to see the different parts of a Fire Engine and were taught all about why they are there and what they are used for. They even got the opportunity to get up into the Fire Engine and learn about how the firefighters act when they have to go to a call out.
Brownies in Yellow ~ Guider in Blue 