Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Extra-curricular activities

Find advice on the best extra curricular activities in secondary schools and primary schools here.

Original poster

Guiders' staff room - tea, wine, chat and optional dancing around the toadstool

991 replies

MadBadandDangerousToKnow · 03/03/2009 21:57

Thought it might be nice to have a place to swap ideas and experiences. Shall we do introductions first?

My name's MadBad and I've been a Brownie guider for about 5 years.

OP posts:
CheeryName · 22/05/2014 14:06

Hello, I am a parent of a Brownie and would just like to gatecrash to say

YOU ARE ALL AWESOME

I do thank Brown Owl and co each week and send emails every now and then, but its honestly not said enough and when I read about nightmare pushy non-paying parents I am so embarrassed to be a fellow parent.

Psychic paper, I think you are right, I would do a total revamp including new names. If they pick the same one flip a coin...

Xihha · 22/05/2014 14:41

Kleine, our list is swamped so putting names down early is a good idea here. We will sometimes swap girls between lists if they move closer to another unit or a particular night is difficult but generally people here just go with the closest unit.

Youdontneedacriminallawyer · 22/05/2014 15:33

Cheery, I am a Snowy Owl, and I would like to thank you on behalf of all Owls, everywhere.

We do the job because we love it, but it's great to get positive feedback from our customers/parents.

The parents of my unit are pretty good - they are very supportive and appreciative of the work we do, and help whenever needed.

OP - do a total Six revamp, or move a couple of older girls from other Sixes to the Six requiring a Sixer/Seconder.

"Old" Six names are the best I say - we have Gnomes, Imps, Elves and Leprechauns.

MaudantWit · 22/05/2014 20:28

Cheery - That is lovely to hear. Thank you so much. Most of my parents are (I hope) silently appreciative so it's kind of you to come here and say it.

Psychic - My sixers are the four oldest Brownies at any one time. This sometimes means that a girl has to shift to a different six to take up the sixer role. They always seem happy to do this and it helps the rest of the pack to understand that (except in the once-in-ten-years that five Brownies moved up to Guides at once) everyone will get a turn at being a sixer.

When we gave the Brownies the choice, they opted for the new wildlife names, but our nearest pack, given the same choice, opted for the traditional names.

Groovee · 22/05/2014 20:34

I've had to jiggle my sixes about and I didn't put seconders in, I put the 3 girls, we as a team felt were ready to be sixers. We've only recently made 2 girls seconders. Both worked hard to show how much they had matured and listened to what was said. I explained why they had been made seconders too. We do have a bit of a young group at the moment.

Cheery Thank you x

MaudantWit · 22/05/2014 20:50

Our little bit of pack democracy is that the sixes choose their own seconder, which does very occasionally mean that a girl who has joined quite late gets to be a sixer without first being a seconder.

angelcake20 · 28/05/2014 19:03

DD's pack is rejigged regularly to keep a spread of ages between the sixes. She has been in all four sixes in her 2 and a bit years (though still has her original badge). The sixers are the eldest four (annoyingly for dd who is fifth eldest and will only get 1 term as sixer, whereas fourth eldest, three days older than her, gets a whole year!).

Groovee · 28/05/2014 20:11

I did loom bands tonight after we made our fathers day crafts. It was complete silence. The girls loved it.

2 sleeps til we go to Deep Sea World for a sleepover for the brownie stay away!

MaudantWit · 29/05/2014 00:28

Are you not on half term this week, Groovee?

Deep Sea World sounds like fun!

Xihha · 29/05/2014 00:43

how did they get on with the loom bands Groovee? DD wants to try them but they look a bit complicated to me.

Groovee · 29/05/2014 07:31

No, Scotland doesn't do half term. We finish in 4 weeks time for summer anyway.

The loom bands went fine as most of the girls knew what to do from watching you tube. They could have had them for hours. Definitely something for a pack holiday filler!

MaudantWit · 29/05/2014 09:45

Talk to me about loom bands, about which I know nothing. Are they like scoobidoos? Would I need to buy loads of kit for them?

Groovee · 29/05/2014 09:58

The works sell them for about 99p. You can buy looms too. But my girls used pencils or each others fingers. You tube has video's but your young leaders may know what to do. I gave each six a bag of them and left them to get on with it.

Amazon have quite a lot.

MaudantWit · 29/05/2014 10:22

Yes, it was the potential cost of buying the looms that deterred me. I will look at YouTube.

Groovee · 30/05/2014 11:45

Doing our Big Brownie Birthday Stay Away tonight. Sleeping at Deep Sea World in Fife with 73 brownies and 13 leaders.

momb · 30/05/2014 16:22

I got everyone a loom (3.50 off ebay) for pack holiday this year and it was brilliant: I'd never had a 'go off and do your own thing' activity before and we always got through tons and tons of crafts stuff. They went off in their social groups and wove their bracelets for ages. really good filler, lots of fun and for the first time we leaders had a sit down and cup of tea together in the daytime (rather than in shifts) as there were a couple of periods where everyone was just off in their rooms chatting and weaving.
Loom bands and french skipping: the two great discoveries of pack holiday 2014!
Our stay away is in June and we have a day out with all the brownies from the country and then our dividion (about 130 girls) and leaders are camping (OMG!) at a local activity centre: then getting up for eggy bread, high ropes and raft building.

psychicpaper · 30/05/2014 16:24

We are doing the world centre brownie trip in a couple of weeks

Very excited to go to "Sangam"!

Groovee · 31/05/2014 15:37

We had a fab night, one brownie went sleep walking and landed on top of another poor brownie who managed to get out and alert us. The leaders had a right time trying to move her and we were poorless with laughter at 3am about it all.

I got about 2 and a half hours which was impressive for us. Felt quite sad the 2 guiders kept themselves to themselves and when speaking to others were really quite rude! The organiser said in future she won't be taking up their offer of help due to the amount of rudeness to those of us working hard all night.

Otherwise it was a fab night and worth the experience x

Xihha · 01/06/2014 00:45

Bit of a long shot but I don't suppose anyone has any old badges laying around in the back of their cupboards? my camp blanket got damaged in a flood and I'm trying to replace the stuff I lost.

Particularly after an old Rainbow promise badge (the green cloth one and the cloth rainbow that went over the top).

Groovee · 01/06/2014 09:24

Try the facebook girl guiding buy, sell swap page, there is a ot on there x

Xihha · 01/06/2014 15:26

is that this one? I've found most of the brownie and guide badges on there but no Rainbow promise badge. x

Groovee · 02/06/2014 07:54

No, this one

Lifestooshorttosleep · 09/06/2014 14:04

Psychicpaper - we are off to Sangam next year, currently fund raising for the trip. Would love to hear what you think, and any advice you have. Thanks

psychicpaper · 09/06/2014 15:29

Lifestoo - sorry I wasnt clear, I am taking my brownines to a UK TAC which is pretending to be Sangam.

I have been to actual Sangam a couple of years ago though so PM any questions you have :)

Which programme are you doing?

Groovee · 09/06/2014 16:44

Pizza making this week... had tried to get the Frankie and Benny's workshop but they kept ignoring my emails. Despite asking me to email. So doing it myself.

Next Week we're having a Big Brownie Birthday Tea Party as our end of term. Then it's the holidays for us, back in August! Been a quick year.