Guiders Staff Room Part 4

[Groovee]

Moving on from Part 3

@MarieVanGoethem and @rivierliedje yes but guiding has moved on. Flowers are not right for a modern guiding movement. I wasn't prepared to be Bluebell for a rainbow leader either.

I don't remember having a flower name for a guide patrol when I was younger at all.

@underneaththeash I didn't mean to suggest that because they have been used in the past, they should continue to be used. I just thought that might be one of the reasons they were there.

I personally quite like trees as a connection with nature or animals in general. And I like that the fairy folk for Brownies have stories behind them. But I know they are not everyone's cup of tea.

I don't mind unicorn et all, though do feel that will feel dated fairly quickly.

@underneaththeash
My Guides like using the ones currently in use...

Admittedly birds were brought in as girls who’d been Scouts were annoyed at going from lions to lilies & larks was an improvement; but I don’t see why flower patrol names are incompatible with modern guiding if that’s what the girls want. And I say that as someone with a diabolical lack of botanical knowledge & insanely bad hayfever

Been a while, but referring to patrol names I was an Orchid, my patrol chose it because the badge was awesome, much better looking than the robin one!
This week must be some sort of record, I ended up signing off 5 interest badges. I did feel bad about the 6th incomplete one though. The girl doing it comes from a home where English is the second language, she was trying to understand the badge book herself. Trying to explain abstract/ figurative art to a just turned 7 year old was "interesting". In the end i told her to come back with 2 more pictures looking a certain way.

scissy
Come over here & say that again Feck knows we’ll never be doing that one in a meeting...

Have you many EAL Brownies? We’ve only 2 atm (& both speak Tamil at home - one’s just transferred to us from another Unit partly to be with her friend [but as ever, complicated situation is complicated, she wasn’t able to continue at her previous Unit etc]).

Situation you describe was a concern I raised with Girlguiding prior to launch new Programme. As with children who do not have access to Internet/safe outdoor spaces/stationery other than a couple of pencils for school (if that)/essentially any variation on “access to resources needed to do badges”, answer = “interest badges are optional”. Total failure to understand that not wanting to do them = not same as wanting to & not being able due to circumstances utterly outwith their control. I very nearly wept tears of pure frustration when the HQ staff member (who’d loftily announced that interest badges weren’t meant to be done in Unit Meetings in the then-outgoing Programme EITHER “but Leaders just do it anyway” [also, yes, please do join our conversation, everyone loves having some randomer loudly barge in] couldn’t understand that there might be a SLIGHT methodological flaw in testing how well only doing interest badges at home works by relying on feedback from parents you select by asking for volunteers to test said new badges...

Hope the wee one does ok with her pictures. One of my oldest ones did her painting badge & painted some absolutely amazing Story Stones: am really annoyed I didn’t manage to photograph them because they were really brilliant. She’s very creative & I’d have loved to have a record of them but as ever I was doing 8 things at once. I so SO need another Asst Leader. Though HURRAH for at least having a new (baby) YL with latest cohort of Guides moving to Rangers: 3 of them (plus a very good Brownie Helper) makes running meetings possible!

I've just signed up to the leadership program for Brownies.

Do I belong here?

nervous smile

Thanks MarieVanGoetham, I was on this thread back in the summer too, I just took a break for a while
She's our only EAL Brownie at present (although there are a couple due up from Rainbows soon). I think she chose the badge because another girl showed her paintings the week before. They were very similar so i think she was just copying what the other girl had done. We're going to keep an eye on it and give her extra help now we know she's interested.
I have a "WTF" folder for UMAs we are never going to do . Currently sat in there are "en pointe", "competitive car park" and "hedgehog homes".

@OldElPasoHadAChicken
Course you do

scissy
We have a standing offer for anyone who’s not sure about something in a badge to ask a Leader about it & remind them fairly regularly. And of course, as ever, we work to meet individual needs & circs.
Nice to know someone else has a WTF/Burn It With Fire folder “En Pointe” we could do. But only because I have enough classical ballet training to do it properly & safely. You don’t have to be doing some huge spectacular move to hurt yourself I should know, am the person who tore all the cartilage off the back of her kneecap doing echappés: endurance ones en pointe, admittedly, but still...

I'm always forgetting to take pictures of what my Brownies have done and am starting to regret it.
We had some incredibly creative pumpkins at Halloween. We didn't do any carving, but I got one pumpkin each and got out all the random odds and ends from the craft cupboard. There was some amazing ones, including an elephant!

Oh man, taking my brownies to Little Giggle tomorrow! Hoping all goes well as we're getting the train then walking in Stirling.

rivierliedje
We’ve a Unit Twitter so I try to capture at least some of our antics, but sometimes Things Elude Me. Is fab for letting parents see what we get up to in meetings though.

Groovee
Good luck! Hope you have a fab time. I’ve outings next Saturday & then the Sunday after (latter being Frozen 2 yes...)

@MarieVanGoethem
Yes I really should make more of an effort to show the parents (and community) what we do. Especially as so few of the parents seem to have any Guiding/scouting experience and the local cub pack is very popular.
@BiddyPop
The catholic Guides also still use them, though they seem to be a brighter shade of blue.

@rivierliedje
Having the Twitter account lets us do both those things really easily - plus contact charities if we do something to support them etc. Is helpful for looking back through what we’ve done, too.

@OldElPasoHadAChicken

Welcome! 🦉🥃🍫⛺🔥 Here's a starter kit for you.

Happy new year everyone. Are you all ready for the new term? So far my Brownie purchases are a stamp and 4 decks of cards!

Happy New Year, just had our first meeting of the new year, making bird feeders and doing lots of skipping!
Longing for the days of daylight (or even twilight) during the meeting.

We winged most of the first night. Although I did majorly adapt "make your snake" into a general planning activity. We now have a few ideas for the term
Next week should be interesting as I am making constellation viewers with them and currently the forecast is for rain

I’d to miss our first meeting of term (to be clear, I’ve now done my Being In Hospital for this year; Quite Enough Of That Thank You...) but there was usual planning + bookmark-making got squeezed in as well.

This week we celebrated Winnie The Pooh Day. Because we’re cool like that. Oh yes.

Next week = Lunar New Year funtimes - doing the Pawprint Badges Year Of The Rat Challenge Badge. We did the Year of the Pig one last year & to my Asst Leader’s relief the Brownies chose Lunar New Year as one of festivals they most wanted to do this term: she’s after having the full zodiac of badges...

Do any of you have any advice for the best way to give up guiding? It wouldn’t mean the unit closing but would mean more reliance on parent helpers. I’m really struggling to know when the best time would be and how much notice to give.

I’ve posted here before but have name changed.

If you need to give up, do it however’s best for you. And don’t listen to any “but we neeeeeeed you THINK OF THE CHILDREN” stuff. Yes, we need Leaders. But we’re volunteers. With lives. Not always, for a whole range of reasons, compatible with staying in guiding. It’s ok to put yourself first.

From a practical POV, given the time of year, I’d say to let the relevant people know ASAP so they don’t pay the annual subscription fee for you for this year; & so you can plan any necessary handover + leaving stuff.

What did you decide to do? I hope you message the best decision for you.

I'm having waiting list blues. Anyone got any leader recruitment ideas? I currently don't have any spaces until Sept, at that point it'll be 4 spaces max for 12 girls

Leader recruitment is difficult!
First port of call is parents of course and trefoil guild?
Do you have links to NCT groups or parents at other extracurriculars?
I find leader recruitment much harder that girl recruitment.
The main thing I can think of is to get to know that person who knows everyone (some people just seem to have an in with everyone/every group) and get them to recruit for you

Happy Thinking Day all.

It hit me today that this will likely be my last thinking day as a leader, after 26 years in Guiding, which is just a little bit sad.

That's sad. Are you staying involved at a distance, or stopping completely? What do you plan to do with your newly freed up time?

I am a Brownie leader in training and have lost interest in continuing, being a unit helper was fun but training is tedious. Before I throw in the towel what advice do you wize owls have? I have a mentor meeting tomorrow and just feel a bit 'meh'.