Guiders Staff Room Part 3

[Groovee]

Reconvening over here ladies.

I am just wondering what is the way forward here. We are also moving - less than a mile - but it's my unit! Opened Brownies as there was a need. Then Rainbows. Then Guides. The units near the new house are all someone else's and some don't work for me with day/time either.

drspouse Is it possible to continue at your unit from where you're moving to? I know lots of people who travel to be at units they've set up or been with for a long time when there are closer units to where they live! I dont have any suggestions about upping numbers though, with a unit of 30+ my new guides dont have that problem!

My evening went really badly this week. Guides wouldn't listen and we only did half of what I'd spent a week planning and organizing, including days spent cutting, laminating, making a ton of jelly and custard and covering sprouts and grapes in chocolate Even more frustrating though was that i know half the unit from when i was a leader with rainbows and brownies before uni, and the rest from helping on camp and occasionally over the last few months, and they showed no respect for me as a leader. I know it can take a while to get used to someone new, but I'm hardly a stranger! I just wanted to cry when I got home. They've been warned by the unit leader though that if things dont improve we'll have to cut the number of guides, so that helped! Hopefully next week will be better (fingers crossed!)

Gingers that's crap. I hope next week goes better.

Oh that's rubbish Gingers.
I could easily carry on with the same unit - my AG, and the Rainbow leader, come from just as far (not far at all).
It's a question of who I'm actually doing it for - if two girls turn up it's really depressing.

DrSpouse, are they going to other units or leaving guiding altogether? Our nearest Guide unit gets about 50% though to BP but I think that the leader must be jumping though hoops to keep them interested. It's just a stage where they have suddenly so much going on that there comes a point where something has to give. Plus, here at least, the guides tend to be the 'accomplished' girls who also do music or sports or whatever, and by 13 they are being pulled in all directions. My youngest DD is 12 and still a Guide, but even she wouldn't go if her friends weren't there, and if it were too stressful: quite often the patrol times seem very (almost too) relaxed but I think it's what they need and the leader has it right: she gives them amazing opportunities and activities that they want to stay for and then tolerates a ridiculous amount of laziness/cheekiness which to me (as a Brownie leader) would be intolerable....but it works for her and she is running a huge (54) and popular unit. It is variable though: I remember when my eldest went through Guides they were down to 6 at one point, so your numbers may yet rally.

...which is a ridiculously longwinded way of saying that sometimes even if you do everything right, the girls just have other priorities so don't take it to heart. How many Brownies can you move up, or could you run a joint unit for a while?

They are leaving altogether. Mainly before Guides (but we do a lot of joint stuff, joint residential etc so they know what they are getting).
We've got a few strikes against us recently, a horrible situation with the complaint over the summer so several left, then sisters and friends of them left Brownies, one of the other leaders hardly wants to show her face at school let alone do publicity as the Queen Bee mums have been slagging her and the unit off.
So 5 have left due to being busy or outgrowing it but we were barely in double figures anyway.
This is with a background of another unit locally having 50.

And yes we do a lot of what I think are great activities. Last summer we did a very popular tented village camp. Animation workshop last term, plus a couple of things (disposable cameras, and a couple of deaf lads coming) that they were fascinated by, and a panto trip. This term they've asked to go to a water park so we've decided they can plan it for their World Traveller badge. Next term Brown Owl is supposed to be booking a joint PGL holiday (but has not got her act together as far as I can see).

That's crap Gingers. Last week my were in their sixes to start, bit busy talking and not stopping. Wise Owl ran out of calm, blew the whistle 3 times and we did a fire drill! Afterwards warned them that if they can't pay attention they'll be doing lots of fire drills- a great threat in winter, not so effective in summer!

I have no ideas about recruitment. You're guides sound great, I get twitchy about dd1s guide unit, they don't do much, and they lose a lot who are bored. Equally compounded by the ones coming up from my unit are used to a varied (full of crazy ideas that have Wise Owl going grey) programme.

My census is £31.50 p/h. Nothing for district, they rely on the shops profits. Will be writing a cheque for £825.50 and swooning. My years rent is less than £80, and includes hearing so I'm quite lucky in that respect. Have to be out on time for the yoga ladies, but can't really complain.

We pay from the same account for R/B/G and I think it's over £700 (we were told we couldn't possibly have one bank account but I'm so glad we did, saves finding new signatories 3 times over when one leaves, we also kind of swap round when necessary for meetings so most of us are not section-specific - I think only two of us don't have more than one section on our ALQ out of 5 or 6).

AG has had some ideas about recruitment, I am reluctant to tell her they have not worked in the past but I did say don't bother with bring a friend as Guides won't even bring them (Brownies will but few join and Rainbows bring them but then we have no space!)

I have decided I'm going to subtly see how far along my AG is towards finishing her ALQ and then make a move back to Rainbows but taking it in turns with the R & B leaders (who should be up for it - Brown Owl has an older Brownie daughter for example) to make up an extra body at Guide meetings which shouldn't mean too much extra time at meetings and not so much planning. Rainbow leader has an enormous waiting list and if we have more Rainbows it means more Brownies then more Guides (and if they have sisters etc. it could be sooner rather than later).

My rent is £1250

Jeepers! What sort of place is it? That's tough for you

It was but then I adjusted my thinking that we had to cost less a term than one or two weeks of most other extracurricular activities.

Did a proper budget and put my subs up to £35 and I stopped making do and running round giving up my weekends fundraising.

Parents are happy, I have my life back and no more sleepless nights woryjgn about census. Now subs are a real reflection of running costs. The pressure within guiding to keep subs artificially low does a disservice to a pot of leaders.

Hello can I ask some advice? I am leading rainbows this week but usually I am more of a 2nd in command! We are making masks as our roundabout is festivals, we normally do games after a craft but i would like games ideally around festivals and masks etc. Any ideas? Thanks!

You could play fruit salad but give them all a festival to be rather than a fruit?
Similar with duck duck goose (carnival carnival christmas or something :o )
Hedgehogs, but get them taking part in different festivals in between hiding under the - eg move like you're in Mardi Gras, move like Santa, move like you're tossing a pancake... (I know not everyone has the moving around in different styles bit in their hedgehogs, but we do and my favourite is move like statues!).
I'm all outta ideas now :o

Re rent, this reminds me how lucky we are not to pay any! We are open-sponsored and the church where we meet doesn't charge us any rent. They have 8 uniformed groups meeting there, with the same arrangements, they see it as part of their community outreach or something I think.

Carnival style games (ping pong balls into a bucket, beanbags into a hoop, that kind of thing)

Corners, with the names of differemt festivals (corners can be adapted to all themes, it is my go to game)

Or as they have masks, follow the leader, each girls gets a chance to lead in a bit of dancing round the hall as if they were in a carnival.

My rent is about £200 a year (we pay per week we actually use it so it can be less if we are going out a lot). Census is £23, which I thought was a small fortune til I saw what other areas are paying!

I've had a slightly mad plan (too complicated to detail here) and our R&B leaders are thinking about it... I feel a bit better.
We pay £50 per month but that's for all 3 sections, and that's only if we use the hall for every meeting.

Can any of you lovely Guiders give me some ideas as to what I could do with a box of chocolates...? Apart from scoffing the lot myself, of course!

I bought two boxes of chocolates (Celebrations and Heroes) to get wrappers to use in a chocolate wrapper clock-style Kim's game. But there are plenty of spares and I'd like to use them in an activity, rather than just give them out as a treat. Normally I'm very good at dreaming up ideas but this has me stumped for some reason.

We played chocolate bingo with the Thornton wrapped ones after Tawny bought the peanut M&M's instead of chocolate and we had a. It allergy.

Thanks, Groovee - that is a good idea. I also finally thought to check GFI chocolate and there is an idea in there to create a board game, so we could do that. Or, if we have less time, I could just take in snakes and ladders boards and get them to play using chocolates as counters - that might be a quicker fill-in idea.

One thing I'd planned was million pound drop using chocolates as money to use up a tub of heroes I'd been given for christmas. We played it in a division meeting last year and it worked really well!

You could do like the chocolate game, where you sit in a circle and whoever rolls a 6 has to put a hat, gloves and scarf on, but instead of using a knife and fork to cut it you could use chopsticks as its already in small pieces.

Chopsticks game could work - thank you. And I've never played million pound drop, so I'll see if I can figure that out :)

OH God I have wasted all afternoon doing our accounts - although I have £11.07 in the tin at the year end (31/12/16) the spreadsheet shows i have -£58.73 cash balance - an impossibility! so where is my missing £58.73...

I wouldn't mind but I'm a bloody trainee accountant and last week a sodding parent told me I should get an accountant in because I couldn't remember her giving me £10 at some point near the end of term last year and I have no record of it...

It also means I have nothing prepared for tonights meeting as I thought the accounts just needed checking over

The good news is that the bank balances and if they all pay subs promptly, we can actually pay our census on time... perhaps...

I have just done up a template for a "plan, do, review" on weekly meetings, as we are supposed to operate that way. I've filled it in for the 1st 3 weeks as I was the leader in charge, but it's other leaders for the next 4 meetings, and not everyone is keen on paperwork and form filling (although 1 of those is the 1 that's pushing that we have a note of the meetings and outcomes, what worked etc)!. I can but try....

Our Cubs are mad into "Zombie Apocalypse" at the moment (Blind Man's Buff). But there are a few who don't like it and it's hard to shout down the mantra that starts up once we mention "we'll play a game before the meeting ends". I was going to do "Ship, sea, shore" or "port, starboard, bow, stern" (same thing effectively - it might be different versions of "Corners" to learn bits of boating terminology?) but got shot down. I need to build my list of games for them - they usually need some kind of running and there are 25 in total! Although the key game (1 blindfolded has to listen for the sound of a set of keys being taken from under their chair, walked around outside the circle and deposited again - if they point correctly to the traveler, they win, if traveler returns safely, they win - traveler winner becomes the blindfolded person, otherwise Leader chooses a new person) works well, as does "snatch the bacon" sometimes (but we've had issues about rules with that one and which crack on the floor is the right one to cross).

We make parents give any money in envelopes with the Cubs name marked on it - so we don't have to remember offhand who gave 1 of us this money?! Especially if it was to 1 leader and it's handed on to another (as generally 1 minds most of the money). I am just after setting up a spreadsheet to track money though, as we had no system in the Troupe (although the Group overall has a good system - but the other Troupes don't tend to look for term subs like we do - to cover art materials, electronics, badges and all sorts ourselves rather than having to seek Group funds which takes time and there are huge pressures on those for boating needs).