GUIDES AND BROWNIES

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 19 (Supplement)

GUIDES AND BROWNIES

WORK AND PLAY FOR TEST. NATURE GAME FOR BROWNIES. Brownies in sizes, when Brown Owl gives the signal c£2ryone goes out and collects as many different colours belonging to natural objects, in a given time. When time is u.p Brownies arrange their collection in their homes.” The six getting the most colours and arranging them the best win. The Golden Hand Test. Cooking and making tea are always a subject of controversy—partly because Owls often disagree as to the most suitable dishes to cook, and partly because in many cases it is hard to test. Let us think of it for a moment from the Brownies’ point of view. Is cooking something she likes doing? Definitely, yes. It is practical, creative and most exciting. It is knowledge she can use and be proud of possessing. If this is the case, then surely we should do our best to see the test from her point of view, and pvt our own difficulties in the background, remembering that we are Owls only to run our packs for the children, and doing our best to make everything fun and adventure for them. How, then, can we set about teaching this part of the First Class test, especially if our club rooms have no fireplaces or gas cookers? Our first job is to make sure that we ourselves can make a really good pot of tea, and cook a satisfactory milk pudding or stewed fruit. This is a most important part of the test for Pack Leader, and should always be done in the practical way. Even if Pack Leader has her cook’s badge, this does not necessarily mean that she can make good tea or cook a good milk pudding, or that she can teach others tc do so.

A game is to turn some of the Brownies into rice, others into sugar, one into a jug of milk, another into a spoon, another into a basin of water etc. Then the sixers in turn can pretend to be the cook ( a newspaper hat and apron is a great help) and make the pudding, using Brownies as required. These games will help, but Brown Owl should make sure that the Brownies are also getting real practice at home. If she goes round to the mothers and explains the First Class test, and what is required, she will almost always find them most ready to help, and to show the Bro nies how to cock at home, or perhaps again she can have them once or twice to her own house or to a friend, which is, of course even more thrilling for the Brownie than doing it in her own home, because of the strangeness of it all.

Fold Clothes Neatly. The paragraph about folding clothes in the Brownie Handbook gives us good ideas for games on this part of the test. Have you played at being mother packing a suitcase ready to go away to the seaside? Have you ever been sailors asleep and roused suddenly to hear an urgent summons to the deck, and see who call be the first to appear properly clothed? Moreover, have you ever noticed how your would-be First Class Brownie hangs up her clothes when she comes to pack meeting? Is she tidy? Does she help others? And how does she keep her six possessions?

Tidiness and method are much more difficult for some Brownies to learn than for others, but they can be kamt much more easily at Brownie age than at any other, and we need not wait until we are training First Class Brownies to begin forming these habits in the pack. Should we perhaps give an eye to our own attache cases if we are to try and teach our Brownies tidiness?

Book-Balancing. At the Brownie conference we were shown how to make a newspaper ring to put on our heads for the book-balancing. This enables every Brownie to maintain a good position when walking with a book on her head, whatever the shape of her head and whether her hair is curly or smooth. It also gives us a great opportunity for many games. We can carry trays with plasticine muffines on them and pretend to be muffin-men. We can carry tin or enamel jugs and pretend to be going to fetch water from an Eastern well, and we can really practice doing all kinds of things while we are balancing a book on our heads. Some of us can even pick things up from the floor. We can do the whole of this part of the test out-of-doors with the added advantage that the good position necessary for the balancing will enable us to breath better and more deeply.

Skipping. In teaching skipping, the Brownies should be urged to skip lightly to hold their bodies easily and loosely and to keep their heads up. Message. s>

How many of us can remember playing at being messengers of the King when we were small? There is something inexpressibly exciting about carrying a message which appeals to us all. Why not send your Brownies messages in semaphore, to be learnt, and kept scu--'t and the letter destroyed and the message delivered to some outside friend by a certain day. An answer could be given for the Brown Owl and the two messages checked with the results, and if the messages hint at something strange and mysterious, so much the more exciting. Interchange this with good practical shopping games, where Brown Owl is mother and sends her Brownies out shopping for her on a Saturday morning. Tawny has the shop anu the Brownies working for Second Class are shop assistants and do up the parcels. The children are chased by a witch on the way (Pack Leader) and the shop assistants can join in the game, so that some minutes elapse between the giving of the message and its delivery, or the children could clean their shoes before they got out, etc. The message needs practice, but is great fun to do, and can be fitted in to numerous games, and ,goo< turns. The sixers can be entrusted with messages to the other Brownies and so their test can be used in their pack life.