Code of Conduct and Games

29/01/14

This evening we did more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge. One of the compulsory activities was for the girls to create a 'code of conduct' in their sixes. We provided paper with a border for them to write on and Brown Owl gave them a couple of sentence starters, such as "as a six, we will...", "when our leaders are talking we will..." and other similar things. There was a bit of complaining before they started (as one girl said "ugh, literacy at Brownies"!) but, once they'd got started, they actually worked quite well together! I was surprised that we didn't have more arguments and disagreements because that seems to have become the norm for our unit with this set of girls. Us leaders basically left them to their own devices and the girls came up with some really good ideas (although with some amusing spellings!) which would make for a perfect unit if they stuck to them all..!

Once they had finished, we said they could play a game before moving on to the next activity. One of the other Young Leaders ran a game of trains (instructions here). To start with, they weren't listening to her and the game was going nowhere until Brown Owl stepped in and pointed out that they'd just written down how they were going to behave and they were breaking every single one of them! She told them that, if they listened, then the game could begin quicker and they would have more fun than if they were talking to their friends and not listening to instructions. After that they listening and the game went without any more hitches!

We had originally planned that we would then do another one of the Big Brownie Birthday challenges - writing in code. It wasn't the highest voted from that section but it was pretty high up, however none of the girls wanted to do it; the majority wanted to play more games instead. Brown Owl gave in and told them that they could play fishes (instructions here) which seems to be the girls' favourite game at the moment however, this time, it didn't really go to plan. The two girls who ask Brown Owl first are allowed to be the 'sharks' and this week it ended up being two of our older girls. We started noticing after a few minutes though that they were specifically choosing a girl who they were going to catch each time instead of trying to catch them all equally. This was leading to tears from the targeted girls and Brown Owl eventually called a halt to the game. She told them that games are never fun when people aren't playing fairly and then told them to get into their six corners. We had an old leader visiting for the week so we got her to pick two girls to be sharks, on the grounds that she doesn't know any of them. The second time round, the game went far better because they were all playing fairly. We also didn't have any tears from girls who had been caught because there was never any doubt as to if they had been or not. I think we need to not play fishes for a while although there might be uproar about it from the girls if I suggested it - I just think that taking a break and playing different games might be a good idea. 

Overall, this was a fairly successful meeting. Although we didn't do what we were intending to do, the girls still had a good time which is what I think Brownies should be all about! And I think they might slowly be getting the message about team work and fair play which is a good thing too...