Challenge evening

10/10/13

This evening we ran a challenge evening which can go towards their Adventure/Adventure On badge. They were all split into their sixes and rotated through 5 different activities. Each leader was given an activity to run and the girls had 5 minutes to complete them, after which the leader would write down their score to be added up later.

Before we started, the girls were read a 'shopping list' which they were told to remember for the end of the meeting, as a six. Some of the girls all tried to remember all the items whereas some sixes had each girl remembering one or two items from the list, which seemed to make sense to me.

1. Cities
I was on this activity. I was given a map of Britain with 10 dots on it and an envelope of 10 city names. The girls were given the challenge of matching up the names to where they are. They ranged from places they should know (such as London and the local town), others they should have been able to guess (Aberystwyth - the only dot in Wales!) and a few which even I struggled with (Penzance for example). Most of them got the 'easy' ones although we had a few interesting placements of our own town, including in Scotland! One of the sixes resorted to asking me "Is this number 1? Is it number 2? Is it number 3?..." until they got it right..! Others tried to guess but were generally unsuccessful. I don't understand how they can not know anything about our country; even I could make educated guesses for the few I didn't know straight off and, when I was their age, I had a greater knowledge of our country than they appear to...

2. Paperclip chains
The six was given a box of around 100 paperclips and told to make the longest chain they could. Obviously, the best way to go about this would be for each girl to take a few and start making a short chain and then join them together at the end but some sixes didn't seem to get this idea and were all trying to add to the same chain. Unsurprisingly, the sixes that made the longest chain (using all the paperclips) were the ones who made several chains and joined them together!

3. Don't Say That
In this activity one girl was chosen and she had to stand facing all the others. She was then given a card with a word at the top to describe and a list of 4 words underneath that couldn't be used in describing the top word. The rest of her six had to guess what word she was describing.

4. Sugar Cube Tower
In this activity the girls were given a box of sugar cubes and they had to make the tallest tower they could with them. If a tower reached 6 blocks and fell over, 6 was recorded as the highest and then they started again to see if they could beat that height. I think the highest they got to was around 15/16. This has always been a favourite amongst our girls although they always ask if they can eat the sugar even though it's been all over the floor!

5. Balloon keepy-uppy
The girls were given a balloon and were instructed to not let it touch the floor in the 5 minute period (although they weren't allowed to hold it.) It was quite interesting watching different sixes doing this activity - some had a system in which everyone was given an order and the balloon was passed around everyone and in others it was a free-for-all which resulted in tears from some of the younger (and therefore shorter) girls because the taller ones could reach the balloon first.

After all the girls had done all the activities they were given a piece of paper in their six and told to write down the shopping list form the beginning of the evening. Unsurprisingly, the groups who had shared out the items to remember did better than the groups who had all tried to remember it all.  Finally, we added up the points and announced the winner before the girls all went home.

This evening was interesting as I got to see how each six worked as a group and which sixers had good ideas. It was very intriguing to find out which girls were naturally good at working in a group and which ones weren't.