This week we continued building our body confidence and self-esteem through the Free Being Me challenge badge. We reminded the Brownies about our Free Being Me wall, a place to collect positive statements throughout the meeting and our leaders wore our caring friend necklaces which contained 5 beads; one for each of the words “I am loving and caring.”. These were given out when we saw a Brownie doing something thoughtful and considerate for another Brownie.
We started with Once upon a time. The aim of this activity was to realise the downsides of trying to look the way society tells us to and the value of not focusing too much on appearance. Buttercup read the story of the mice Millie and Gilly. Milly liked nothing more than spending time with her friends and eating her favourite kind of cheese as a treat. Her best friend Gilly was great fun to be around but spent so much time worrying about her appearance and getting dressed up that she was missing out on lots of fun. After the story, the Brownies drew pictures of how they imagined the mice looked. The girls then discussed in their Sixes with a leader the story, why Gilly felt under pressure and how by feeling she has to look a certain way, wasn’t making her happy and actually had a lot of downsides.
Following on from Once Upon a time, we completed the A happy ending activity. The aim was to learn a different way to be positive about our appearance and by recognising the value of what we can do with our bodies. Using the pictures the Brownies drew of Gilly, we played a game. We numbered each part of Gilly (1 for ears, 2 for nose etc.). Using a die, the Brownies took turns to come up with something great about the part of Gilly that matches the number on the dice.
We spent time filling up our Free Being Me noticeboard with post-it notes full of our real role models and more positive statements. It’s now full and looks amazing!
For our last activity we made “I like me” fortune tellers (or catchie-coos) to increase our confidence by practising saying positive things about ourselves in front of other people. The Brownies had to write 8 short statements in their fortune teller saying what they like about themselves. We then spent time playing the game with as many of their Brownie friends as possible in 5 minutes.
This week’s awards saw Alicia being nominated by Sunflower, for her excellent work and enthusiasm, as this week’s Best Brownie. Alicia received a lovely pencil and certificate and took home the trophy and Brownie dolly mascot for the week. Olivia received our mascot penguin for her excellent work too.
That’s it for now .. next week we’ll be finishing our work on this awesome challenge badge.