This Fall our Brownies have done a TON. We've been to camp, done service projects, written to pen pals, gone to a badge day, sold cookies, done 3 challenge badges, and much much more! Its been a super start to the year. When coming up with the plan for the final meeting, my fellow guiders and I thought it would be super fun to just have a big party. Ask the girls what they want to do, plan around that and have a big, fun event.
This year we came up with a new plan for selling cookies. Of the $12.25 of profit we got per case we split up the funds like so: $5 goes back to the girl who sold the case in the form of a camp credit, $5 goes to the unit to go towards things like craft supplies, $2.25 is put into the hands of the girls to decide as a group what to do with. When we asked the girls what they wanted to do for their party we brought up their cookie sales. Our unit sold 24 cases of fall cookies which translated into $54 for them to decide what to do with. We told the girls they could choose between: Ordering a Fun Crest for each girl from the Guide Store, doing a "Bigger" craft at the holiday party, saving their money for later or putting it towards off setting the costs of something like a movie day. Overwhelmingly the girls wanted to do a Bigger craft at the holiday party so we guiders put our heads together to come up with something awesome.
We decided that we would make the Holiday party a sort of family open house event. Each girl was invited to bring a guest (Mom, dad, grandparent, older sibling, etc.) of any gender to be their partner for the night. With the additional adults we were able to do some more complex crafts as well as partner games and dances!
The girls LOVED having their guests at Brownies. They joined us for fairy circle time, opening and closing. The girls got to show their guests their fairy circle songs and how they go around the toadstool and put their dues in the dues box. All of the Brownies were smiling ear to ear.
The first craft was a no-sew rainbow scarf. Each girl got a bag with the required materials for the scarf and worked with their guest to cut out the shapes they needed and assemble their scarf. This was a more complex craft but the girls all did a great job. Even though they got the same materials many changed up the pattern/colours of their scarves so they were all unique!
Following the scarf craft our guider Snowy Owl led the girls in a craft to create holiday plant arrangements. Snowy owl did a short lesson on the different kinds of coniferous trees the branches she brought came from and then let the girls explore and experiment with different branch types and glitter decorations to make their arrangements.
This was something that none of the girls had done before and they all really enjoyed it. All of the arrangements turned out beautifully!
After the crafts we wanted to get up and more around a bit. We learned and danced a partner dance called the "Jingle Bells Dance". It was tons of fun to see the girls dancing with their guests laughing and having a great time! Once we were tired of dancing we taught our girls' guests the Obiswana game that they had learned the week before. Everyone seemed to like the variety of activities.
Snowy Owl was able to take some videos of the Jingle Bells Dance and the Obiswana song. She was only able to get a portion of the dance but even in this small clip you can see how much fun the girls are having!
After the games and dances we did our Secret Friend handmade gift exchange! The girls also got to take home the badges that they had earned over the past few weeks. What an awesome night!
What a great Start to the Guiding year. Cant wait for more fun in 2017!