Guiders Staff Room Part 3

@BringOnTheScience I feel for you. Lots of gracious nodding and taking it into consideration through clenched teeth and promise of wine I bet! Good luck

Just tried hard not to rant on this AIBU post

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3493915-To-be-pissed-off-DD-wasn-t-made-a-seconder?watched=1&msgid=84549174#84549174

... it got worse at Parents' Meeting!

Can I drop her off early? (more than an hour early!!!)

Can she have a single room? She's used to her own room.

Give me the strength to get through this!!!

Ugh! Pack holiday prep and Those Parents are niggling about who's going to be in which room with their Flossie.
Well, you can't all share with Polly Popular and someone has to share with Sally Special-Needs.
And Tessie Talkative isn't sharing with Charlie Chatty because we'd quite like to get some sleep.
And yes, Connie Cottonwool-Wrapped will do Orderly & Health duties along with the rest.
And we will be encouraging Felicity Fusspot to at least try some eggy bread.

Sent my parents the summer documents but no meeting. I think it helped that we did the programme and rarely did interest badges in the unit (2-3 a year max) or on holiday.

It's a massive change for those who just did challenge badges or interest badges rather than a slight challenge it is for the rest of us.

Lots of things need to get better soon (go) and other stuff but it's good to have consistency across areas when the average volunteer stays 2 years.

It takes a bit of getting your head around, but I do quite like it now We’ve also found that a lot of the UMAs Sound a bit odd or just look a bit nothing’s when you glance through, but a few times now have gone back and realised we’d not really appreciated some of them fully!

In general, there’s no race to get all the awards, and no expectation that every child will get the gold award. We will plan the programme so that they get the opportunity to to do everything they need to do, but equally we’re not going to heavy handedly push them to!

Thanks @EduCated

That sounds more positive!

The new programme should take about 60% of your meeting time (40% for all sorts of random other activities).

Generally a Skills Builder every term, and then a mixture of UMAs from across the different themes to give a varied programme.

Ok, so I'm now an official rainbows leader in training! Last week us new leaders for our group got to have a proper look at the new rainbows programme.

I have to admit I've been feeling a bit down about it ever since.

Me and the other new leaders volunteered because we were so filled with enthusiasm about all the wonderful ideas we had for activities to do with the girls, mainly around crafts, performance and outdoor adventures. But now I've seen the very formulaic programme I feel like there is no freedom for us to use any of our ideas!

Have I misinterpreted it?

Do the other rainbows leaders strictly follow the plan and work through a themed activity each weak to get to a full theme badge as the main priority.

Or do you just work on a random badge the girls might be interested in every now and then and not have a targeted plan towards a theme badge? and do your own add hoc activities in between?

Guiders and uniformed lurkers as need you and your input here >>>>>>>>> www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3475780-Guide-Camp

Guardian has this article about the impact of guiding

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/05/a-letter-to-my-guide-leader?CMP=share_btn_fb

Welcome Mayhem!
Look at doing the e learning modules, they will update you. There are ones for rainbow leadership and the new programme.
Im sure you will be fine.

Locally most rainbow leaders have flower names, it was a bit girlie for me (and I started the unit) so we just use our own names.

One of our rainbows is colour themed - the new leaders are Red Rose and Red Tulip. But yes to making sure it passes the supermarket test 😂

Thanks everyone! That s good tip about hearing it in the supermarket 😂

There is no requirement but I like having some kind if nicknames. At Rainbows we use the owl names too because a few leaders do both and we kept accidentally saying eg. 'Tawny - sorry no - Amy' and getting very confused so now we all have owl names. Helps with transitions too I think.
Others I've heard of are other bird names (robin, magpie, sparrow, etc) or other animal names (hedgehog, badger, squirrel, etc) or insects or another pair I know is Sunshine and Sparkle.

Be creative but make sure it isn't something you would be embarrassed to hear being yelled across the supermarket (or wherever!)

Our local Rainbows use flowers, jewels or Disney animals

Our Rainbow leaders just use their first names.

Do rainbows leaders have specific leaders nicknames like they do in brownies (ie brown owl etc)? If so what are some examples used?

Specific rainbows advice please.

6 weeks! We've got 3 - looking forward to it though

Yes, from our shop /rangers leader: rangers uniform from Jan (indeed that'll be Feb or March) and YL uniform in a year's time (balls- 18mths, if its anything like the roll out of safe space)

There's a couple of fb groups that focus on selling guiding uniform. It's usually rainbow /brownies but often SS uniform pops up. Might be worth trying those.