I won a prize!

Check me out, I was randomly generated by Metropolitan Mum to win a digital camera!

What an adventure!

You may have noticed me talking about the centenary of Guiding (if not, here's some info).

Last week, we got the Brownies to plan their Adventure 100, the official centenary challenge. With 10 activities in each of 10 sections, there was a lot to narrow down! So each six picked a favourite and second favourite in each section, we put them all together and tried to come up with a programme that covers everything that got at least two votes out of the eight available, plus a few others.

Together with two or three fixed plans already in place, we've now planned January to July as a result!

Here's the plan:

Week 1 Penpals/American Games/World Guiding

Write cards to Americans, play American games

Week 2 World Guiding

Week 3 Cool Buffet and Cool Threads

Make sundaes, design own t-shirt, decorate own t-shirt

Week 4 Be a Star/Music to Ears (girls rehearse and make instruments)

Girls perform something, need to practice, bring instruments. Make shakers for those who don't want to perform

Week 5 Be a Star/Music to Ears (girls rehearse and perform)

Girls rehearse and perform - poss in front of parents?

Week 6 Flashback (EU country) - Germany

German friend to help teach some vocab, games, songs, food from Lidl

Week 7 World Conference - Scotland

Jen to run Scottish night

Week 8 Joint party with Rainbows (5.30 to 7, both units)

Joint party for Rbows and Brownies, with theme of being 5 because our unit will be 5.

Week 9 Stargazer night at local school observatory

Need to contact school to ask for observatory access

Week 10 Midnight Feast/Play in Dark

Eat picnic in dark, make refridgerator cake, play games in dark

EASTER

Summer Week 1 Fire Safety (school)

Cover clauses of fire safety (if we can get a firefighter to come to us, great, if not, must be prepped to do it ourselves)

Week 2 Fire Safety (fire station)

Week 3 Moving - Off to the Races

Make own hats, have picnic, race something (cars?)

Week 4 Water Games/Water for Life

Taste different flavours of water, play water games outside such as throwing sponges

Week 5 Shape 100 and Jump Up High

Make 100 shape out of things and selves. Then games based round jumping.

Week 6 Aquarium visit

Contact local garden centre to see if we can visit, particularly to look at aquariums but also anything gardeny

Week 7 Olympics 100

Run our own Olympics, with each event based around achieving 100 as an individual or six

Week 8 Dream Catcher and Necklaces

Have ordered dream catchers, beads and thread

Week 9 Floating/Hanging Around, local playground

Climbing frame/parachute games/girls to bring kites

Week 10 Puppets and Show

Have ordered farm and jungle puppets to be sewn up

Week 11 - Camp Fire

Usual end of year stuff - make smores, play games outside. Joint meeting with Guides, poss also Rainbows

Additional events:

Panto Jan

Thinking Day Feb

London weekend Mar

Birmingham carnival Apr

Brownie Takeover May (tentative)

Also to squeeze in if they come off - a night of Bollywood dancing, a visit to a local radio station and some community service - we usually have some service every term but as long as we squeeze something in over the two terms I'll be happy given the special centenary circumstances. There: 21 weeks of fun!

That's not even including a division camp being planned, we probably won't take part in that for a few reasons: we are doing a lot already, plus our Guides are doing it so will be using the tents, and our Rainbows will probably do it for a day visit so any other leaders will be involved with that.

Tiles - fantastic!

We went to Ironbridge a couple of weeks ago and decorated ceramic tiles using clay. The tiles were then fired at over 1100C for three days, then sent out to us.Before

After

BeforeAfter

Before, with a picture of the aimed-for end product.

After

Love them, love them, love them!

Resigned

Well, I've done it, I've handed in my notice as Guider in Charge for our Brownies.

Eek!

I've been thinking about it for a while, I've been doing it nearly five years now so I do feel I have done my bit.

I'll still be going to every meeting, helping with planning, using my overnight licence when required.

But I will no longer be:

• running the waiting list,
• being the person who signs the girls up for everything,
• being the person who organises the paperwork for everything,
• being the person who gets the phone calls/emails,
• the person who stores all the boxes!

One of the current assistants, whose daughter starts Brownies in September, has agreed to step up then. So I'll carry on to the end of the school year, July, then in September she will be the main leader.

At the same time as I told the District Commissioner I wanted to do this, she told me the Division Commissioner (one up from her) wanted her assistant District Commissioner to become assistant Division Commissioner, leaving the District Commissioner needing a new assistant.

Guess who!

Kind of makes sense to be honest, I'm trained for the new Guiding computer system so can support on that, I'm often the person she runs stuff past. So if the former assistant does accept, then as long as it doesn't turn into me having lots of paperwork again (and she assures me it won't), then I am up for it.

Remembrance Sunday

We went to a Remembrance Sunday service this morning - 13 Brownies, 2 Guides, 1 Young Leader, 4 Leaders.

I was so proud of the girls just for being there, and for their excellent behaviour.

It was very moving, and I think the older people appreciated having so many young people there.

I plan to make a massive fuss of the girls who turned up on Thursday evening, plus give them each one of these beautiful badges.

Next year, if we do it again, we should have a poppy wreath to lay, we were told we didn't need to have one, and indeed we didn't NEED to, but the Scouts laid one and it would have been nice for us to do the same.

Lest We Forget.

I did go so now it's gone!

Girlguiding has a new computer system and every unit needs to go on it. It means we'll have one centralised place for the girls' information and will make it easy when girls transfer.

I wasn't a big fan, even after being trained as a key user for my area, until the day I deleted my waiting list a couple of months ago when I overwrote the file with a much older version in error. At that point, if the information had been on the system, I could have printed off a new version; instead I had to reconstruct it using the Rainbows and a bunch of emails from parents over the past three years.

As well as adding my own girls (24) and then my waiting list (23), I also had to train exactly half the leaders in my area. I trained some a couple of weeks ago then the remaining two tonight. All done now.

I still think it has flaws - it only works in one browser, not the one I prefer to use. And when you print out an emergency contact report, you get every girl, you can't remove the girls not going on that specific trip, so you'd have to score them out.

But it also has benefits - data can be retrieved if you delete your own records *blush*, easy transfers between units and even across the country, smart report creation with medical and dietary information highlighted.

So I'm a convert...but I am glad the bulk of the work is done!

World Heritage

OK, not strictly Guiding, but we had such a good family day out yesterday I need to pass it on!

We visited a World Heritage site. Though there are 890 of those across the world, and much as I would like to see the Great Barrier Reef or the Great Wall of China, we stayed local and went to Ironbridge Gorge.

Potted history: The world's first cast iron bridge was built over the River Severn at Coalbrookdale in 1779. The designation of the Ironbridge Gorge as a World Heritage Site recognised the area’s unique contribution to the birth of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the impact of which was felt across the world.

Ironbridge has 10 museums, if you want to see the lot you really need 3 days, though most people would probably find about 2 days worth of interest and skip a few. You can buy admission to each museum, but if you go to more than two, a passport is better value. Why am I bothering to tell you that?

Three reasons:

1. to save you money if you are thinking of going
2. because we were so impressed - the passport lasts 12 months and you can go back to any of the 10 museums as often as you like in those 12 months
3. because I am a crafty crafty woman and even though the passports are great value for money I managed to save us even more money by finding a "Buy an Adult Passport, get a Child passport free" voucher for each of the kids on the Heart of England website. If you visit the West Midlands or live in the area, you really should check that site out before going anywhere, pretty much everywhere we visit has some kind of voucher on there.

On this trip we went to:

• Enginuity - a kind of science museum (reminded me quite a lot of Snibston) where as well as Son pushing a steam train just by turning a wheel and Daughter trying a range of blades on a wind turbine to see which was most effective, they also got to make boats from scraps of plastic bottles, binbags, straws etc then sail them in a test tank. This was Son and Husband's highlight of the day.
• The adjacent Museum of Iron - ok, I confess we didn't actually go round this museum, just went into the cafe and had some lunch.

Then we got in the car (the museums are scattered over 6 miles) and drove down through Ironbridge to:

• Jackfield Tile Museum - This place is still working and produces tiles for many London tube stations, and also had very interesting displays and videos about producing tiles (yes, the kids were interested too, it was that good!). The highlight here for Daughter and me was decorating our own tile - not just a ceramic tile with ceramic pens, this was way better. You were given a blank clay tile, having just seen them being made in the factory. You selected a design (or drew your own) then traced it onto the tile. Then you got a bag of piping clay and piped that on to the design, then pots of coloured liquid clay to fill in the colour of the tile. Son did a dog (heavily helped by his dad), Daughter did an owl and I did an Art Nouveau style. You have to leave them to be fired, then they are mailed out, so I will add pics when we have them.

A quick drink from the cafe there and we headed off to the actual Iron Bridge and a visit to the Tollhouse.

An excellent day out, 80 mins from home. Next time it will be so much cheaper, as we will already have our passports so admission won't be a cost, plus we plan to take a packed lunch and extra drinks with us.

Next time, probably around Easter, we plan to visit:

• Blists Hill Victorian Town - I went here when I was around Daughter's age and still remember it (I remember the Iron Bridge too, though as with many childhood things, I remembered it bigger than it actually was)
• Tar Tunnel, and if there is time,
• Museum of the Gorge.

Oh, and steering everything back to Guiding, there are two Youth Hostels in the Gorge, plus a shuttle bus around the gorge...I'm thinking a Brownie weekend in Ironbridge maybe this time next year?