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A Few Thoughts and Ideas
Need ideas for things to do with your troop? Try these!
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Safety Pins Hold Us Together
Ingredients
One small plastic container
Many small pieces of paper
Any number of safety pins
A writing utensil for each participant
Invisible tape
A cooperative nature
Preparation
Count out any number of safety pins and record the number on a piece of paper that is held on to for later
Mix pins well into clear container
Tape container closed
Procedure
NOTE: The participants may only see the container of pins at the beginning of the activity.
Pass the container allowing each participant 5 seconds to study and estimate the number of pins in the container. Each individual records her guess.
Pair participants up - challenge each pair to choose one of the individual guesses to be their joint guess. Allow pairs 30 seconds to make this decision. Each pair records their decision.
Combine pairs to make two larger groups - challenge group members to choose from the guesses made by the pairs for a group guess. Allow 1 minute to make this decision. Each group records their decision.
Bring the whole group together. From the previous group choices, the larger group must choose one number as the entire group's guess. Final guess is recorded.
Processing
Write the final guess on a piece of paper - post on wall. Do not reveal the actual number at this time.
Explain that each decision they made involved a possible conflict - when it was just an individual guess, the conflict was in your own mind. What happened as more people were added to the mix? Was it harder or easier to make a decision? Did everyone feel they had input in making the decisions? How were decisions made at each level? What would it have been like if the entire group as a whole had to make one guess at the beginning? The more people involved in making decisions, the more intense the conflict might be.
How does this way of decision-making reduce conflict? [By making a series of small decisions vs. the entire group attempting to decide. When it is the large group often only the most vocal are heard.]
How can this be used with a troop? [To foster cooperation; to give everyone the opportunity to express their opinion.] Can be used with any planning session. Propose what needs to be decided, have each girl write her thoughts down, pair up individuals, the pair discusses, narrows choice to one, combine pairs, combined group discusses and make decision based on input from pairs, larger group makes one decision.
Show the group the paper with the actual number of pins written on it.
Taken from the CPC newsletter
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BEEC Recipe for Winter Poetry
Ingredients/Quantity
Winter Season/ 15 minutes
Merry Winter Seasoned People/ The More the Merrier
Creativity/ Gobs
Words/ From 1 to 100
Pencils/ One for each person
Paper/ One for each person
Large Sheet of Paper/ One
Tape/ One Roll
Sense of Fun and Laughter/ An Abundance
Memories of Winter/ Minimum of ten
Directions
During the winter season, press merry winter seasoned people together. Mix them thoroughly with creativity, fun, and laughter. Fold in a pencil and a paper with each person, taking care not to extinguish fun.
Toss animal action words and people action words onto a large sheet of paper that all can see. Press and form the words into two separate columns, animal action and people action.
Pull and stretch memories of winter, such as frozen nose hairs, from winter seasoned people. Place winter memory words under above action columns.
Attach one winter memory to each winter seasoned person. Stir the memory with three words from the animal action column and three words from the people action column. Sprinkle additional fun and creativity onto winter seasoned people, as they create winter poetry that describes a winter memory and that utilizes three animal action words and three people action words.
Read winter poetry and roll with laughter.
From the CPC newsletter.
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