This week I ran the meeting. I made a comment last week to Brown Owl about whether she'd planned anything to celebrate Chinese New Year with the girls and she said no but, if I wanted to do something, I was more than welcome, so I did! I started out by Googling Chinese New Year traditions and games. One of the first things I picked up on was the giving of red envelopes and I thought it would be nice if each girl got an envelope with something in it. I then saw these dragon mobiles on Baker Ross and decided that we could do those. I thought it would be nice for the girls to try some Chinese food as well so that was next on my list. Originally I decided that they could try eating the food with chopsticks but I thought that could get a little difficult so I turned it into a game instead. Finally, I had a game and a song up my sleeve if needed and I was ready to start collecting everything I would need.
First I started planning the dragon mobiles. I decided that it would be cheaper for me to make my own mobiles instead of buying them from Baker Ross. I played around with a couple of different sizes before I settled on this, which is A5 size:
Mum took them to work and photocopied them onto card for me. I coloured one in to show the girls what it would look like in the end and also to give them some ideas for colours:
The next thing I planned was the red envelopes. The envelopes themselves were fairly easy to source and then I created a sheet to go in them on Word. I took the words from here (and simplified them a little bit for the girls) and added a photo of their animal to it. I also left a couple of boxes blank so I could write in their name, date of birth and draw their name in Chinese. Mum also photocopied those at work and then I wrote in the boxes. For the names, I used this website. I copied the names into a Word document, made sure they would fit in the box and then printed them. I then traced each one onto the sheet - it took me about 30-40 minutes to do them all but they looked quite impressive once I was done! This was the final product of an evenings work:
The hardest thing to source was cheap disposable chopsticks, surprisingly! It took a friend and me almost 2 hours of walking round numerous pound shops and other shops (and Costa because it was cold and raining..!) before we finally found some in Wilkinson's at 5 sets for 60p. I then bought some dried pasta and peas. The aim of this game was for the girls to move as many items from one plate to another in a minute, using the chopsticks. They were then given one point per piece of pasta and 5 points for every pea and their score was added to their sixes total.
Finally all that remained was to buy the food and head to Brownies. I settled on microwavable duck pancakes and prawn crackers with a mild chilli dipping sauce.
The first thing we did at Brownies was to give out the envelopes. They were a little upset that they didn't have any money in them (Chinese tradition) and, in retrospect, I should probably have put in some chocolate coins or something. Some of the younger ones didn't understand the paragraph about their animal so we had to spend a while explaining parts, although lots of them were comparing with their friends to see who was the same animal and whether they suited their animal. Only one girl asked me what the Chinese said but she seemed quite impressed that it was her name.
We then got the girls to get out tables and I told them about the craft. I was surprised at how many of them seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it because we've done quite a few crafts recently and they seemed to be getting a bit bored but this week we really struggled to get them to tidy up at the end! Most of them coloured it in really nicely, on both sides and some of them even copied mine exactly! Some of them had trouble cutting out the head as it was a little bit fiddley but most of them had a pretty good go at it and then the leaders helped with the final bits.
While they were doing the craft, our Young Leader and Guide took a six at a time into the kitchen to have a go and the 'chopstick challenge'. They decided to allow the girls to use the chopsticks in anyway they liked because not many of them could use the properly and there wasn't time to teach them all. There were a lot of girls who were holding one in each hand, which worked out to be quite effective in some cases! The only rule that was enforced was "you have to actually pick it up to move it, you can't just scoop it from one plate to the other!" I was surprised at the number of girls who managed to pick up a dried pea with the chopsticks as I struggled a little to begin with and I find using chopsticks fairly easy. In the end, the winning six got around 70 points!
Finally, we ate the food. Two of the leaders had microwaved the duck pancakes while the girls were doing their dragon mobiles and we allowed each girl to try one. They weren't forced to but we encouraged them to at least try a little bit even if they then threw the rest in the bin. Some of the older ones were messing around a bit and pretending to throw up in the toilet but lots of them tried one and all the spare ones were eaten pretty quickly by girls who wanted seconds! We had bought 4 packets of prawn crackers and they were all gone within 5 minutes of opening them! Some of the girls tried the chilli sauce but found it too spicy (we'd bought the mildest they had!) and went to get drinks pretty quickly.
Overall, I think the evening was a huge success even if we did run out of time to play the game and sing the song I had up my sleeve and there's always next week (and next year - when I'll be at uni and with a different unit) to try out new ideas and improve upon those from this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment