Over the last two weeks we have been working on our Reflect Stage 1 skills builder. We’ve run this activity a few times with the unit, but it was our first time with our 4 year old Rainbows (some of whom aren’t yet at school) and were a little unsure how some of the activities would land. We shouldn’t have worried!! It was great. We had some really interesting conversations and by working in really small groups with a mix of ages we could spend a little longer.

First up we had What Matters Most; and thanks to Sunshine we had a set of bodies and parts with lots of different values written on them, this resource is great. We hid all of the body parts and gave each girl in the group a blank body, they hunted for the different parts and filled their body. Once every girl in the group had a complete body we read what was written on them, with some of the older Rainbows helping the younger Rainbows. We talked about how they are all values and they’re quite important. But which was most important to each of them. Most Rainbows chose something about being kind or helping others, which is great as it’s part of the Rainbow promise… we decided though that although not mentioned explicitly all of them were part of the promise and what we as Rainbows think is important.

Also on this evening we talked about Traditions with Tradition Teamwork – we worked in small teams to see if we could catch a season and then share as many different traditions that happen then. We loved the winter one – we’re good at all things Christmas :D. We also had a fifth ‘season’ but actually it was a trefoil to represent guiding, and had the chance to talk about what we do in guiding; from making our promise, to wearing a uniform, to going on camp. Lots of fun.

This week we completed the final 3 activities. We started with a game of ‘If your eyes are brown, turn around’. The girls loved seeing how sometimes we’re the same as someone else but a lot of the time we’re different.

We moved on to Big Questions, in our small groups we took turns to pass around the imaginary hat. When the hat stopped we answered a question; from what’s the tastiest thing you’ve ever had (most said chocolate or sweets) to what’s the softest thing you’ve ever touched. It was hard but we all had different opinions and actually some of us even changed our minds when we heard what others said.

Lastly we looked at growing together. It worked well being after the activities we’d done this evening as it consolidated everything together. We talked quickly about how we’re all unique from how we look to what we think and things we like. Every girl designed their own flower to represent them; we had butterfly flowers and leopard flowers, and flowers with lots of colours and petals. We finished by putting all of these together to show our garden of Rainbows!! Don’t you think they look beautiful!!

At the end of 2021 we were given a batch of Future Girl badges, we wanted to make use of these to provide something fun and exciting for the girls.

Originally these badges were given to units free when they completed some activities to inform the latest strategy. From the results of this the current Future Girl resources were created. See more information here: https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/girls-making-change/future-girl/

In 2019 the first future girl acts week happened and we acted on plastic (and had a special badge for this too). 2020 (covid) put a stop to the next ones (hoping we get one later this year). Girlguiding did however create a badge and resource about each of the 5 areas.

So… what did we do and how did we do it.

Each of our leaders took an area and delivered some activities for it. We met for 3 hours and in five groups we rotated around every half an hour.

We took the 5 areas and did activities in each:

Adventurer: soft archery. We got adventurous and had the chance to have a go or develop our skills further with the archery sets.

Planet protectors: we discussed animals that are close to extinction and made badges (also a UMA). Upcycled bottles into plant pots and cup and ball games.

Barrier breaker: we tried our DIY skills. Changing batteries and LEGO house building. We’ve got some fab play DIY woodwork sets that we’ve had for a while. This gave us the chance to practice our sawing skills and then either hammer and nail or using a screwdriver to attach them together. We’re looking for other alternatives once we’ve used this set up as the material isn’t particularly environmentally friendly.

Respect makers: we made friendship bracelets and gave them to someone we didn’t know, made chatterboxes and played a yes or no game with statements about friendship.

Self believers: we took time to care for ourselves, had a go at yoga, did some mindful colouring in (we were shocked that adults do colouring in too) and breathing stories to calm ourselves down.

We had such a fun afternoon and we’ve got a little bit of extra money to put towards our birthday trip out.

This week has been wonderful. Yesterday we received an Amazon delivery containing something from our wishlist. The folders we received will be very useful to store the resources we’ve created for some of our unit meeting activities. This means we can store them in our cupboard for the next time we want to do the activity.

Unfortunately we can’t thank the kind person who sent us the gift as there wasn’t a gift message in the parcel. But thank you; and thank you to everyone else has sent us something over the last year. Your generosity really does help the unit with providing activities and new challenges for the girls.