1st Eastington Brownies

We welcomed 3 new girls from Rainbows to Brownies for the first time.

Those to whom it really matters – the Brownies – got to see the new programme this week and it was really well received. We looked at the six Themes which are the basis of the new programme and then played a ladders game, including the themes, to learn them – and in an attempt to wear the chatty brownies out!

They were excited about the new ‘Interest Badges’ with some oohhs & aahs as we read through them together. We’ve decided that each leader is going to select an interest badge and present it, using 1 or 2 of the 105 different ways suggested, to the Brownies themselves, so they can see just what is possible. The girls are going to choose for us which badge we do.

We used a giant dice to select activities from the new programme:
‘Unit Meeting Activities’, UMAs, are the activities that we do together as a unit. Each of the 6 themes require us to do a total of 4 hours of UMA, but the individual activities are chosen and led by the girls, not the leaders. Each girl selected one activity (from printed cards) after their throw of the dice, and summarised it for the other Brownies. We then took a vote on the ones picked and the ‘First Aid’ and ‘Strike a Match’ were chosen with a vote of hands; so we will do both of these at the next meeting.

This was our first night back and the girls were chatty and excited so we didn’t get to talk about ‘Skills Builders’ – which make up the other element of the new programme to be done in the meetings. The Skills Builders provide the opportunity for the girls to work in groups. That’s for next week!

We also talked about our sleep over in January, now that we have a venue, and the Brownies are voting on which night they want to go away, as this is one of the activities that makes our unit special to us.

All in all the girls gave the new programme a very positive reception, and we are all looking forward to earning Theme & Gold Awards.

If you know a girl aged between 7-10 years who is interested in joining Brownies please contact me on (01453) 825577. Pauline Dobson.

Within each theme there are a number of activities that the girls can do, which are subdivided into three elements; Skill Builder Stage Badges, Personal Interest Badges and the weekly Unit Meeting activities.
Generally, girls will work towards Skill Builder stage badges within the group meeting time and towards Personal Interest badges individually/at home. Unit Meeting Activities are done within the group and may be chosen from a very wide range of topics within the themes.
The 6 themes and the elements are consistent across the Rainbow/Brownie/Guide/Ranger sections, with the challenges of the elements’ activities progressing accordingly. Awards are based on the completion of all three elements within each theme at the appropriate section level.