Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Being Prepared!

A really good Risk Assessment resource updated in 2013 after 10 years.It's a lot lighter but is a downloadable resource rather than a purchased one. The case studies have been updated, but the art work is identical so well worth retrieving before recycling the one on the left. The old one had a rather extensive table of things that could go wrong which is missing from the new version but not a great loss. There are now some separate flow charts (not included in the resource) on risk management & "Can I do an activity with my unit?" and a Risk Assessment Template which are useful training tools.

A way to display the Brownie Promise

This was given to me by a very resourceful Leader I met at a training in Newent last month. A split pin has been used so the flower can be turned and the lines of the Promise have been numbered to help the Brownie learn her promise - a lovely idea.

Thank you.

Monday, 29 December 2014

A Prayer for an AGM

Extract from "A little Book of Prayers" by Lilian Woodward 1996. Mrs Woodward died recently and had been very active in Mid Glos guiding for many years. This is a super little book with many prayers for different guiding occasions including last night at camp and around the camp fire. We used this one at our recent AGM:

O Lord God we come before you at the beginning of our Annual General Meeting to praise you for all the good things that have taken place in our Division/District since we met last year.

For the friendships that have been made and the good that has been done in caring for those who needed help.

We thank you for those who have served the Division/District so faithfully during the year, giving of their time and energy and not sparing themselves in any way. Help us not to take it all for granted.

So often we take what Guiders have to offer without acknowledging their dedication to the Movement, and often forget that the service offered is voluntary, not seeking any reward.

May all that is said and done here tonight be for the furtherance of our Movement and prove to be a blessing in the days to come.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord
 
Amen

Sunday, 21 September 2014

Reflection on adapting a training

1st Promise Training in April
This is the first Brownie Adventure training in April 2014 when the new resource was freshly published. The turn out was low only 4 leaders representing just 2 units, because it was the night before the Brownie Birthday PGL weekend. The resource wasn't widely available at this point so I took the approach of colour photocopying & laminating the pages so everyone could get to look at the pages. It proved to be quite a challenging training simply because the leaders present weren't the ones who needed the training. They had a fantastic amount of experience with a huge amount to share, maybe just a little too much to share and I was having trouble getting word in edge way! I also bought rather cheap paper tablecloths so when I got the leaders to write their evaluation on the table cloth it seeped through to the table! So please be aware if you try that with the girls.
 

Saturday, 20 September 2014

Unofficial Moving Up resource

A Kindle e-book first published in March 2014 by a young leader called Rebecca Craven, its only 57 pages long and costs £3.08 but the young author has a lot of energy. Rebecca has included a section asking other Leaders what has girl guiding done for you that you wouldn't already have done? It certainly got me thinking about my trip to Our Chalet, my stay at Pax Lodge with my sister, meeting all the wonderful people in BGIFC, my weekend at the USA Girl Scout conference talking about British Guiding and how old my first Brownies will be now (at least 35 years old now)!  
"If it wasn't for guiding, I would never have......"

 
Rebecca has done a lot of research into the movement's history, and surprised me with a couple of things I didn't know, but the real strength of this resource is to show it to your Guides contemplating the Senior Section. I think this e book could play a role in getting your girls to move up.

Monday, 1 September 2014

More Brownie Adventure resources

This is a selection of some of the most useful ideas from Girl Guiding UK publications to help you get your brownies participating and contributing to the decision making processes:
 

Email me and I will send you an MS word version (I've lost some of the clarity with the pdf to jpeg conversion!)

Resources for Brownie Adventure training

This is a "treasure hunt" using the new Brownie Adventure book:
The answers are:
  1.       Adventure, Adventure On, More Adventures
2.       3
3.       P62
4.       P66
5.       Clean-up time
6.       Diwali (p93)
7.       See p34, p70, p104
8.       BROWNIE (p110)
9.       P123
10.   World Association of GG & Girl Scouts
11.   P132
12.   The Pandas
13.   www.girlguiding.org.uk/brownies p15
14.   P37

This is a twist on the Feelings wheel on page 78 (I tried getting the girls to draw the faces but they all ended up looking the same!) brownies need to add a pointer with a split pin to use the wheel. There are 2 wheels on 1 piece of A4 card to get the most from the printer.