Guides activities

[GuideLeader101]

What does your DD love doing at Guides? Or what would you like her to be doing?
I have just volunteered to start up a new group and I'm keen to hear your ideas so that I can make it a group that all of the girls love to be at!
Many thanks

It's an awful long time since I was a Guide, but I clearly remember that tin can cooking was my favourite night of term, every time

Camping and anything involving fire. Any activities involving food always go down very well!

The best thing to do is get ideas from the guides themselves and begin working out a programme from there.

You need to consider what the girls would like to do but there is a new program currently being rolled out which you will have to follow too.

They’ve just overhauled the programme (6 months ago) so a lot of your meetings will be completing those, (but they’re fun!).

My friend ran a guide group and many meetings revolved around chocolate 😂.

I loved anything to do with cooking, survival skills, and first aid.

I know that there is a new programme which I will of course follow, but there will be time for other activities too.
I will ask them what they want to do but I would like some ideas to suggest to help them.
Thank you

I enjoyed the activities that we did running up to outdoor camps, especially the outdoor cooking, first aid skills etc I also enjoyed doing acting, singing and dancing with my patrol. We also had planning nights where we could choose badges to do as a group, we are lucky to have an observatory in our town so we loved visiting there. We did penny walks in nicer weather, with heads being right and tails left and every time you came to a junction you tossed the coin and went what way the coin landed.

Games night, ladders, port and starboard, fishes etc

If you are on facebook there is a great page called girl guiding unofficial challenge badges which has loads of very fun badges!

Also our guides love helping out with our rainbow group and doing things as a mixed group. You would have thought the 10-14 yr olds wouldn't want anything to do with the 5-7 yr olds but they love it.

Food...mine love pretty much anything food related!

Or a good rummage in the crafty odds and sods in the cupboard. They're like little ones again the odd time the glitter comes out

Also, anything even vaguely competitive goes down well. Although we do have to shuffle them about a bit sometimes as we have a few girls with mild SN who would never have a chance to 'win' so we step in and even their teams up a bit ability wise.

We built bridges last week from straws and sticky tape...their efforts took almost the whole meeting but not one team actually read the instructions and specification they were given, I don't think

Oh also we used to go on a "hike" one week during summer term instead of our regular meeting. I remember we would pack bags with drinks, first aid kids and stuff and it always seemed like a real adventure even though it was basically just ambling round some suburban streets and across a few fields.

Agree with asking the guides what they want to do!
Ours love having sleepovers in fun place such as a soft play centre, science museum etc
Also camp activities, cinema trips, ice skating, rock climbing
For hall stuff we mostly do unit meeting activities or have so.e of the guides run an evening here and there, they like the responsibility.
As it's still dark in the evening, dark games are also a hit.
The guides we have atm do not like crafts but previous groups have enjoyed bath bomb making and friendship bracelets etc
Good luck and have fun!

our local scout group is 50% girls, and every single one of them had been to guides/brownies and left in disgust at everythign being too 'girly'

I know it is very much a reflection of the local groups, but it makes me really sad as I was a keen guide in my time.
They come over to scouts because they want all the traditional stuff, camping, cooking over a fire, being outdoors, forest skills, whittling stuff with a knife, canoeing, hiking etc etc.

Badges!!! Anything that got me ticking off badge stuff i loved

Sorry, wasn’t implying you didn’t know there is a new prog. it’s just that it’s such a massive change for all groups and has changed the slant on the ‘free-time’ leaders have to do their own thing considerably.

I follow as many different Twitter and Instagram accounts and fb pages by GG as I can to keep in the loop and look for new ideas (or be reminded of old ideas!).

I always liked learning about guides in other countries, and I liked the history of guiding too. Always a laugh to get dressed up in the old uniforms (if any grannies etc have their old ones still)

A lot of the guiding these days is about empowering girls/young women. Quite political! (If that’s what interests the girls)

I am a Guide leader. My Guides most like anything involving food, camping, going on trips. Some like singing and dancing and acting but some hate that, some like crafts but some don't, some like running around games. It really does depend on the girls in your unit. Ask them for ideas. In my experience, a lot of their suggestions are unrealistic or too expensive but they do come up with some good ideas too. We have found that the new programme has so much to fit in that we have much less scope for our/ the girls' ideas, as we have to fit in enough hours of unit meeting activities/ skills builders etc