Guides and my attempts to guide them

I'm back at Guides tonight. This fills me with slight trepidation as we've been losing numbers recently. This makes for various problems not least of which is the fact that the less Guides there are, the harder it is to do things with them.

 

This sounds counter-intuitive I know, you'd think it would be easier to organise less teenagers tan more. But the problem comes from the way Guides runs. We organise an activity for them to be getting on with now, if there are lots of them the odd one that doesn't want to take part isn't too much trouble. But If you only have 10 Guides and 3 are being difficult it makes it a constant uphill battle.

 

There is also the wondering about why they are coming every week if they don't want to participate. They don't want to do the things we organise and they don't (won't) organise things for themselves so what are they getting out of it?

 

I'm currently pushing for our Guides to take part in one of the Girls in Action projects that are available for us. We've been looking at the Plan UK project and I'm hoping we can finally get it started tonight. The last meeting we had there were so few Guides that it wasn't worth it.

 

I have to confess to a slight obsession with badge accumulation. This is a leftover of my time as a Guide myself. I loved getting new badges for things and even though I loathed sewing them on it never put me off. I'm currently putting my badges on a blanket but I think I might sew them onto my jumper...

 

We need to try and recruit more girls somehow. But we're in a catch 22 at the moment. We can't do very much with the Guides as there are so few of them, and we won't get more girls if we don't do anything. We can't even organise a trip to the cinema with them as they won't all go to the same film! It's crazy.

 

I think I might start planning an end of half-term trip for us now. We don't have a meeting on the last Friday of term as a lot of our Guides never seem to come from that meeting. But I shall organise something with Small Print Larger who is a Young Leader with our troupe and then at least we'll get to go to the cinema even if no-one else comes!

 

I quite want the Guides to have a go at some planting for the Beverley in Bloom project. This would mean our name would go on a plaque somewhere around town. Help get our name out there at least.

 

I really enjoy the time I spend at Guides. I just wish that our Guides seemed to have a bit more enthusiasm sometimes.

 

I have been making madam a knitted owl that came as a free kit on the front of Let's Knit magazine. It's incredibly cute and was really easy to make. I'm half planning to use the leftover wool from crocheting the blankets for my friends twins (due in June!) to make an owl for each of them... Think it'll be really cute to have them match the blankets...

 

I'm glad that I've done some knitting as it's been a while since I have done any. I want to make madam a cardigan and I need to get back into the swing of it...