Baden Powell Award - so nearly there

I've recently had one of my "let go of the reins a bit" experiences, as daughter went off to do her Baden Powell Adventure weekend.
She's been working towards her Baden Powell Award since last January, fitting it around schoolwork and the other things she does, and when she reached 8 clauses completed she was able to apply to go on an adventure - a weekend where she went away with other girls doing the award, none of whom she had met before, to carry out a series of challenges and also learn more about Guiding once you are 14.
At 13 and 3 months, she was the youngest on the weekend - you need to have completed two years in Guides (which starts at age 10) before you can start the award, so you rarely go on an adventure before the age of 13, and most of the girls were 14 and 15.
So I dropped her off at Guiding HQ in the nearest city to us, where 2 Guiders were waiting for 12 girls. They spent the night there then went to a nearby town for challenges the next day, then stayed at the youth hostel there, then headed to a third town the day after then back to the HQ. All along the way they had to budget for meals and whether they would cook them or buy them, complete the challenges and get themselves around using bus timetables to certain places at certain times.
They did a great job - and it proves to me she can cope with that kind of thing so I can worry less next time I need her to get the bus home from town after a school event.
But this letting go thing...it's hard!

Girlguiding news

There's lots of Guiding news around just now, and a few things leapt out enough that I wanted to share:

A new girl every hour in 2011 - isn't that great? What an eye-catching spin on the statistics

Devoted Guide leader hangs up her woggle - this leader sounds wonderful and I hope she is persuaded to stay as an assistant guider with a unit or be involved at division or county level because she really seems to get the useful aspects of the Girlguiding programme and to have inspired a lot of girls

And finally, it appears I am not alone in thinking both Guiding AND Scouting rule - the Chief Guide and Scouts UK Chief Commissioner have issued a joint statement to that effect.

Busy Guiding time, quiet blog

I've been really busy with Guiding stuff and with life, and never seem to find the time to come here and share. If World Thinking Day is Feb 22, does that mean this is a new Guiding year? So I can make my new Guiding year's resolution to be to make the time to share. :-)

I will start by trying to help out a friend's daughter. Her daughter is fundraising to go on a Guiding trip to Switzerland and is making the keyrings and woggles you see on this blog post. She's selling them for £1 each, if you think you might be interested, then you can message me in the comments (include your email address), and I will pass on the comments without publishing them.

World Thinking Day aka Founders Day aka Wednesday

To anyone who has anything to do with Guiding: Happy World Thinking Day.
To anyone who has anything to do with Scouts: Happy Founder's Day.
To everyone else, have a great Wednesday!

Nervous, or jealous?

I'm struggling with a new look blogger interface so while I want to post about the fantastic day I had at Warwick Castle last week and how my Brownies are definitely signing up for an event there, I'm going to wait till I can get links working and add pictures.

In the meantime, a story from the past I was reminded of today in passing. Four years ago, my darling son was struggling with his t and k sounds and often mixed them up, so cat became tac and so on. We signed up with a marvellous speech therapist who resolved the problem - but at her first proper session, we did have to recover from a fit of the giggles.

She gave him a smiley face and a sad face on card and got him to stick them on to lolly sticks for using with various planned activities. She asked him how did he think each face was feeling? Usually a child will say happy or sad.

My son? Nervous and jealous.

No problem with his vocabulary then!