Section 1 - Theme Meetings

 

Themes are an excellent way to spice up the Brownie Program! We have found that a common theme can help to tie a meeting’s activities together, making them more meaningful and more FUN! And believe it or not, once you get the hang of planning themed meetings, this approach actually makes planning easier and more FUN too!

How do you come up with themed meetings? Look for common threads in the Brownie program, find a Brownie law you would like to focus on, choose a Brownie objective, use holidays and seasons as easy theme-starters, select an Outlooks badge topic (Communications, Heritage, etc.) as a jumping off point, or invite a really neat guest—almost anything can be inspiration for themed meetings!

Here are a few examples of Themed Meetings we have found very successful:
Click on the link to go directly to that meeting, or just scroll down the page

Cross-Canada Trip
Friendship Fiesta
Career Day
Healthy Living Month
   Week One: Hygiene 101
   Week Two: Exercise Extravaganza
   Week Three: Food Glorious Food
Wacky Wednesday (a.k.a. Backwards Day)
World Friendship
Winter Festivals
Heritage
Disabilities Awareness Day
Halloween Party
Enrollment Ceremony

Cross-Canada Trip

-After the opening, raise the Canadian flag, and sing O’Canada (in French as well as in English).
-Discuss the meaning of the different parts of the flag.
-Show a picture of the beaver and the maple leaf and have girls brainstorm other national symbols (give picture hints to help them! e.g. hockey, moose, the Bluenose, queen).
-Begin the “Cross-Canada Trip” by dividing the country up into 4 or 5 regions and cycling the girls through a round-robin, about 10-minutes per station.
-The possibilities for each region are endless. Try to make each station different from the others, by choosing a selection of activities: e.g. a story, a game, a craft, some kind of food, or a special guest (Ukranian dancer for the Prairies, First Nations Elder for BC, etc.), etc. Use your imagination!
-Here are some suggestions for Regional Activities that we have tried:
BC:
make the BC Dogwood craft OR learn about Haida art (use pictures) and then create a picture of an animal using the Haida art style OR discuss fisheries (salmon posters or books on salmon life cycle)
Prairies:
briefly discuss the Badlands and dinosaur fossils (use books to help!), then have girls do a simulated dig (use chicken bones in a shallow Rubbermaid filled with sand; girls use paint brushes to unearth their finds and then sketch a picture of their artefact if time) OR read If You’re Not From the Prairies, by David Bouchard (and discuss how the Praries looks, feels, etc.) OR learn about the people that immigrated to the Praries (read The New Land)
The North:
Inuit clothing (if you know someone who has lived in the North or visited and bought some Inuit clothes this is lots of fun for the girls!) OR play some Inuit games (see Games section) OR read The Very First, Last Time OR learn about some of the animals that live up north and sing “40 Years on an Iceberg” (see Songs section) OR discuss the traditional ice houses of the Inuit and how these homes were made, show pictures from a book about igloos and have girls construct an igloo from sugar cubes OR discuss the Northern symbol of the inukshuk (stone structures), show pictures from a book about inukshuks and then girls use pebbles and TACKY glue to design their own inukshuks
Central Canada (Ontario and Quebec):
Learn about Sugar Shack (read At Grandpa's Sugar Bush, or Sugarbush Spring) and taste Maple sugar or syrup OR learn about “Bonhomme Carnaval” (the Quebecois winter festival) OR make beaver tails (a popular treat in Central Canada: deep fried bread with cinnamon and brown sugar) OR listen to Quebecois music, distinguish the different instruments, and try to learn a simple French Song (e.g. “Bonhomme” or Charlotte Diamond’s “Je Suis en Pizza”)
Maritimes
learn about Maritime music (listen to some music, distinguish the different instruments, talk about how folk song lyrics are passed down orally, how they change over time (play “Telephone” to demonstrate how oral messages can get mixed up) OR learn about lighthouses and have girls create their own lighthouse from a toilet paper roll and felts OR learn about Maritime fisheries and sing.

-A nice, but unnecessary, addition to the "trip" is to make passports out of construction paper, and at each station, the girls get a stamp in their passport. It’s always a big hit.

Program Connections:
-Opening My Window on People #5
-Widening My Window on People #3

 

Friendship Fiesta:
This is an excellent themed meeting to do in the first three months of Brownies, while the girls are still getting to know one another! It is also an opportunity to reinforce the idea of a good turn!
-Send a note or Brownie-made invitation home prior to this meeting, asking each girl to bring a female Brownie-aged friend to the special Friendship Fiesta Brownie Meeting that night. -Begin the meeting with an icebreaker or two that involves the girls interacting with people they do not know (e.g. Angels on a Pin, Partner to Partner, Barnyard Bedlam).
-Read aloud a story about friendship. As you read, ask probing questions about the story to help girls focus on the idea of friendship (e.g. “How was ___ a friend to ___?” or “Why did __ not have any friends at first?” or “How did ___ make friends?”)
-Following the story, in the large group have girls brainstorm what makes a good friend. Write their ideas on a blackboard, whiteboard or flipchart.
-Split the girls into circles and ask each circle group to make and present a collage of pictures and words that show what Friendship Means (use old magazines and catalogues, old Canadian Guider magazines, scissors, glue, and felts; girls can cut out pictures and words, or contribute their own drawings and words).
-Make friendship bracelets (thread large beads on a needle, or braid colourful yarn) and have each girl trade their bracelet with the non-Brownie friend they brought to the meeting (Guiders should each make a bracelet to trade with anyone who may not have brought a friend!).
-If time, sing some songs with a friendship theme (eg. Make New Friends, Magic Penny, It's A Small World, Brownie Smile).
-At the end of the meeting give each Brownie a week-long Friendship Fiesta Calendar. Review what a good turn is. Ask girls how a good turn is related to being a good friend. Explain that they must write an entry each day telling how they were a good friend that day (the calendar should be completed over the course of the week and returned at the next meeting).

Program Connections:
-Opening My Window on Today and Tomorrow #6
-Opening My Window on People #4

 

Career Day:
 -Have the girls come dressed as their imagined future careers, and after opening, have each girl tell what she wants to be when she grows up, and why she thinks that would be a good/fun/exciting job to have.
-Invite 3 or 4 parents (or relatives, friends, etc.) with diverse jobs to come in and talk, with props. Set them each up with a table and have girls round-robin through each station, about 10 minutes per station.
-Make a fourth or fifth station “Coffee Break” where the girls can have hot chocolate in mugs and cookies; when they are finished eating they can sign thank you notes for the guest speakers.

Program Connections:
-Widening My Window on Today and Tomorrow #2

 

Healthy Living Month:
The Healthy Living theme could easily be done in a succession of 3 or 4 meetings as a focus for the whole month. However, this theme of Healthy Living could also be broken into 3 or 4 separately themed meetings spread throughout the year.

Week One: Hygiene 101
 -Ask three or four professionals in the personal hygiene field (this could be parents, friends, your family dentist, or just someone you called from the yellow pages) to come to this meeting.
-Remind these volunteers of the age group, suggest hands-on presentations and visual aids whenever possible, and give some suggestions for topics/points of interest (see below).
-Give each approximately 10-20 minutes to present their topic to the whole group.
-You could ask:

Week Two: Exercise Extravaganza
 -Invite three or four health/fitness professionals (or someone who takes a fitness class and knows some simple moves) to expose girls to various types of activities to help keep fit (have them prepare short lessons that the girls could participate in)! -Some suggestions (try to choose some activities the girls may not have been exposed to before!): yoga/tai chi instructor, dance instructor, baseball coach, soccer coach, wrestling instructor, jump rope instructor, karate instructor, aerobics instructor, fencing instructor -Open the meeting with a discussion about why it is important to exercise and ask the girls to brainstorm what sort of activities are exercise. -Show the girls how to take their heart rate before doing the activities and then have them take their heart rates again afterwards to compare. -Introduce your guests and have them begin their mini-fitness classes. This could be done in consecutive presentations of 15-20 minutes each, or it could be done in small groups as a round-robin. -At the end of the meeting, give each girl copy of the Exercise Log (p. 74 of the Brownie Program book) to complete for the following week.

Week Three: Food Glorious Food
 -Invite a public health nurse or nutritionist to talk about the four food groups. OR Use posters or books to learn about the four food groups (the girls may already know a lot—begin with brainstorming).
-Food Group Relay: Split the group into four teams. Have these small groups line up on one end of meeting space in relay style. Give each team a brown bag full of magazine/flyer clippings of various foods. On the other end of meeting space, place four food group labels (with pictures for non readers). The first girl in each team must choose a picture from the brown bag, run to the end and put it under the correct food group label. The girls take turns until brown bag empty. Leaders can then go through each groups choices and discuss any misplaced pictures.
-Lay out the ingredients for a healthy snack. Then give a demonstration of how to put it together and have the girls make their own healthy snack (e.g. “Ants on a Log”—celery with peanut butter or cheese whiz and raisins; or trail mix—offer lots of variety; or crackers, meat, and cheese with fruit slices).
-The Three Meal Poster: Using flyers and magazines, have girls work in circle groups to come up with a poster showing healthy meal possibilities for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Split a poster board or flip chart page into three sections with the headings for each meal. Encourage girls to come up with more than one idea for each heading and to find meals that include all four food groups!
-Food Group Fruit Basket: Adapt the game “Fruit Basket” and use the four food group names as prompts (See Games section for “Fruit Basket” instructions).
-This meeting could be strategically planned to occur just before the “Owls Dinners” start (see Special Events for details)!

Program Connections:
-Opening My Window on Today and Tomorrow #3
-Widening My Window on Today and Tomorrow #7
-“Healthy Lifestyles” Outlooks badge

 

Wacky Wednesday (a.k.a. Backwards Day)
 Basically the point of this meeting is just to have fun. As such, it is a great meeting for bridging with the local Sparks group.
-Via notice/invitations in advance, everyone should be told to wear their wackiest clothes to this meeting (this could be clothes worn backwards, pyjamas, or just plain tacky, clashing, mis-matched clothes!).
-When the girls arrive, greet them with “Goodbye girls, see you next week!” and then sing your closing. Tell them you hope they enjoyed the meeting and had lots of fun being wacky and backwards.
-Make a “Wacky Cake”. Each girl can have a job (measuring ingredient or pouring ingredient). It is very weird because it requires NO MIXING!!
    Recipe for Wacky Cake:

-Play some wacky games (e.g. three-legged marshmallow-and-spoon race, or come up with an other completely silly game)
-Set up an “Imagination Station” to make a wacky craft. Basically, put all your odds-and-ends of craft supplies out on the table and just let them make whatever they like! You can give them more direction if you think they need it (e.g. make a mask of a wacky, imaginary animal).
-Read “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak or another book about an imaginary land, featuring wacky characters or is just generally silly.
-Finish up by singing the Brownie opening and saying “Hello girls! We are so glad you could come to our Wacky Wednesday meeting. We hope you will have fun.”

 

World Friendship/International Day/Brownies Around the World:
-Discuss the idea of how there are Brownies in other countries. They are not all called “Brownies”, they do not all have the same uniform or promise, but they are all members of Guiding.
-Post a world map. Do the girls know of any other countries that have Brownies/Guiding? When they name one correctly, give them a sticky note with the country’s name and get them to find it on the map.
-The next part could be done in small groups. Find out about the promise, law, uniforms, etc. of Brownies from other countries. (See the “Brownies Around the World” books—they are great for this!) How are these Brownies different from our Brownies? How are they the same?
-What questions would they like to ask a Brownie from another country? If you can arrange for Brownie penpals, you can introduce this exciting opportunity now and have the girls write a letter to their individual penpal or in small groups compose a letter to the whole Brownie unit asking some of their questions. Penpals can be done either on an individual girl-girl matching basis or just writing from one whole group to the other. If you have any Guiding contacts overseas or are internet-saavy (many overseas Guiding organizations are on the web), try to make some contacts and find another group of Brownies to be penpals with. (I still regularly correspond with—and have visited with on many occasions--the Brownie penpal I was matched with 18 years ago when I began Brownies!)
-Play a game from a Guiding country. (“World Games and Recipes” or “Games with a Point” are both good sources—See International Games section)
-If there’s time, you can learn a song from another Guiding country. Suggestions: Fire’s Burning in Swahili, Kookaburra (Australia), Tall Trees (Australia), Dutch Shoe Game (Holland). See “Songs” section.

Program Covered:
-Opening My Window on People #7
-“World Friendship” Outlooks badge

 

Winter Festivals:
Basically, the point of this meeting is to introduce the girls to the idea that not everyone celebrates Christmas or Hanukkah, and that there are lots of other winter celebrations around the world.
-In a notice/invitation sent out prior to the meeting, which is held around Christmas time, ask girls to bring snacks and a small gift (~$5 value) they have wrapped themselves. Invite them to wear festive clothes if they wish.
-Briefly discuss what the girls will be doing over Christmas break. Who celebrates Christmas? Hanukkah? Does anybody celebrate something else? What are some other winter celebrations that people know about? There are many different celebrations, but they are mostly linked to a common theme—spending time with family, giving gifts, and giving thanks.
-Organize a round robin with 2 to 4 ten- to twenty-minute stations about various winter celebrations. Give a brief introduction about the holiday and country. Then do an activity connected to that celebration/country. Suggestions:

-Gift exchange: You can do this many ways, but the way we have found successful is to have the girls draw numbers from a hat, and they select their gift in that order (all the gifts are in a pile at the front). As each girl’s number comes up, she may either select a new gift from the pile, or “steal” one from another girl. If a girl gets her gift “stolen” from her, she can choose a new gift from the pile. Once all the girls have gone, the first girl gets a second turn (in which she may switch her gift with anyone). EVERYONE UNWRAPS THEIR GIFTS TOGETHER AT THE END!
-Pass around the snacks and sing Christmas Carols if there is time.

Program Connections:
 Widening My Window on People #2 & #4

 

Heritage:
-In a notice/invitation sent home prior to this meeting, ask each girl to bring something/tell something relating to their family history, and have them share it with the rest of their unit.
-Invite someone who moved to Canada from another country to come talk to the unit about their native country, why they came to Canada, how the two countries compare (similarities and differences), etc.
-Play a game from another country (Hopefully from the country your guest is from! Check “World Games and Recipes”, by WAGGGS, or a similar book). OR Play a game that people who lived in Canada long ago used to play (e.g. Knuckle Bones—Coast Natives, Cats Cradle—Inuit, etc.)
-Look at some pictures/posters/books of how people used to live in Canada. OR Read a story about people in Canada long ago. Who are these people? What does the pictures/story tell us about how they used to live? How is this different from how we live? How is it the same? You could look at both pictures AND read a story, if it works within your time frame/attention span, etc.).

Program Connections:
-“Heritage” Outlooks badge

 

Disabilities Awareness Day:
This theme needs to be approached with sensitivity and is often best aided by community organizations and guest speakers. Here are some ideas, from our experiences:
-Invite a deaf person to discuss hearing impairments. (We have a friend who is both profoundly deaf and in a wheel chair—so she covered both physical disability and hearing impairment.) Have the person teach some basic sign language, and the finger alphabet, and answer any questions the girls might have.
-Invite a person who is blind, or teaches/knows Braille. Ask if they could bring a Brailler for the girls to try. The woman we have asked in the past, brought the girls Braille alphabet cards, with a message to decode. Have the person explain how people who are visually impaired learn to read it.
-Have someone come in to talk about guide/helper dogs. It would be very interesting to learn about how the dogs learn to do what they do, and how they can change the life of the person they help.
-Split girls into three groups to do a round-robin:

Program Connections:
-Part A and Part C of the “Communications” outlook badge
-Widening My Window on Today and Tomorrow #2 (if you have a discuss the career of the guess; e.g. teacher for the visually impaired, seeing-eye dog trainer, etc.)

 

Halloween Party
 -have everyone come in costume and bring snacks
-Round Robin (obviously, there are lots of options here—basically anything Halloween-y) (~10 minutes per station)
1) bobbing for apples. Lots of fun, but makes a big mess. You can also string apples to the ceiling and have them ‘bob’ for it that way—no water makes it a lot simpler.
2) Halloween craft (see craft section)
3) Decorate a cookie (we just made pumpkin, bat, cat, ghost, etc, shaped cookies and gave them icing and sprinkles)
4) Make ‘Happy Halloween" cards for a seniors home or meals-on-wheels program.
5) Eyeball Roll - give each girl a ping pong ball (decorate each one with a marker to look like an eyeball) and a plastic straw and have a race to see who can blow their 'eyeball' across the finish line first.
-some kind of silly Halloween relay race, involving any combination of theme-related activities, eg: flying on a broom, crawling like a spider, wailing like a ghost, walking like a mummy/zombie, wrapping one team member in toilet paper (to make them a mummy)
-pass out snack and read a Halloween story. One possibility is "The Deserted House", a participation story in the "Campfire Activities" book.

 

Enrollment Ceremony
 -Note: there are a million different ways to do an enrollment ceremony. This is just the way we do it.
-we usually plan 45 minutes to an hour for our enrollment, depending on the number of girls you have to enroll.
-select some 2nd Year girls to prepare and present the Brownie Story (from the Brownie Program Book) as a play. We recommend writing all the lines (except for the narrator’s, who can read directly from her program book) on large sheets of paper, and having an owl stand just to the side holding up the sheets. Most girls are just reassured by the presence of the lines and don’t end up needing it anyway, but that way, you’re covered either way.
-select four 2nd years to serve as ‘honour guards’. The to-be-enrolled Brownie walks along the path (can be as simple as paper rock shapes taped to the floor) and when she reaches the first pair of guards, they block her path and ask "Halt. Who goes there?" The new Brownie says her name, and the guards asks "Why have you come?", to which she replies "Because I want to be a Brownie." They then let her pass, and she continues down the path to the second pair of Brownies, who welcome her and position her next to the ‘pond’ (a round mirror on the ground). They gently turn her around on herself, saying "Twist me and turn me and show me an elf, I look in the water and there see..." At the end of the rhyme, they stop spinning the Brownie and position her so she’s facing the pond. The new Brownie looks into the pond and, seeing her reflection, says "Myself." They then take the new Brownie over to Brown Owl and say "This is ____ and she wants to be a Brownie." The owls then get her to recite the promise, then tie on her tie and pin on her enrollment pin.
-we always pin on the pin upside down, telling the girls that once they’ve done a good turn, they may turn the pin right-side-up.
-if you have lots of girls being enrolled, we recommend pairing them up, and having them walk down the path, reciting the promise, etc, with another Brownie.
-serve cake and tea and then your ceremony’s over.

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