Getting to Know You Games

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a while since I posted. The cafe I work in gets crazy busy during the Edinburgh Festivals so August was manic, and I haven’t had the same amount of time to deliver accounts to Division Commissioners and organise planning meetings as I usually do! Now that things this week are getting back to normal I thought I’d share some ‘Getting to Know You’ ideas that I’ve used in various settings for both training adults and working with young people.

Getting to Know You Bingo

You will need: Prepared ‘Bingo Grids’ for everyone in the meeting (go to my blog post for more details)

I’ve used this at Senior Section this week, as we have a new volunteer and two new starts. This worked really well. The idea is that each person (including leaders) are given a grid with different facts about a person. For example ‘Someone who has an older brother’ or ‘Someone who goes to a different school from you’.  The idea is that you have to mingle with people in the room to find people to match each one. You can only use each person in the room’s name once (although if you have more spaces on the grid than people show up to your meeting, I say that if you’ve used up everyone in the room on your list, you can use a person no more than twice!). You can at the end gather in a circle to discuss what they found out about each other as a result.

Catch the Name

You will need: A spongey ball

Everyone stands in a circle. Go around the room and introduce yourselves. After that you say a name then throw the ball to that person. Continue until everyone has had a turn at catching the ball.

Name Association Game

You will need: NOTHING!

Everyone sits down in a circle. A person starts by saying their name and something that she likes. For example “My name is Laurie and I like chocolate cake”. The next person will go “My name is Jo and I like running. This is Laurie and she likes chocolate cake”. The person after that will say “My name is Lindsay and I like to dance, This is Jo and she likes running. This is Laurie and she likes chocolate cake” and so on until some poor person (hopefully a leader) is last repeating all the names and likes of everyone in the circle! Actually going last is easy because you’ve heard it all so many times. 🙂

Pairs

You will need: A pack of playing cards

You will need an even number of people to participate in this game. Take out your cards and put them into pairs. Only have enough cards for everyone in the room participating. Shuffle the cards and hand them out. Each person has to find the person with the card that matches their own (ie Queen of Clubs and Queen of Spades, 3 of Hearts and 3 of Diamonds). Once everyone in the room is in a pair, shout out something that they should share with each other. It could ‘Your favourite Guiding memory’, “your favourite subject at school and why”, “your goal for what you’d like to do at Guides this year” etc.

Toilet Roll Game

You will need: A toilet roll

Everyone sits in a circle and passes around a roll of toilet paper. They are told they can take as much or as little toilet paper as they like. Once everyone has done that, they should pass their sheets of toilet roll to the person beside them. After that, for every sheet of toilet roll they share a fact about themselves.

Two truths and a lie

You will need: Pens and paper

Everyone is given a pen and piece of paper, and some time to think of three facts about themselves. Two will be true, one will be a lie.

You can either do it so that everyone shares in a large group one at time their three facts and the group has to guess. Or you can ask them to pair up with someone they don’t know very well and share their facts with each other. Then in a large group the other person tells the group which fact they think is the lie. The latter way works better if you have a group of people that includes friends that know each other very well.

Spiders Web

You will need: A ball of wool

Everyone sits in a circle, and person with the ball of wool shares their name and a fact about themselves before unravelling some wool and throwing it to another person in the circle. Eventually you should have a tangled web where everyone in the circle is connected by the web of wool.

Are there any good ‘getting to know you’ games that you’ve used in the past that I’ve not shared about? Please do in the comments – I’m always looking for new ones!

And over on the Girlguiding UK blog…

…you’ll find a post that I was asked to write by Girlguiding UK’s Peer Education team just before the summer holidays began.

If you’d like to read it click here.

Incidentally, Anneleen, our awesome partner for this project has been up to all sorts of cool things this summer, and is graduating with many honours with her BA in Professional Photography! She’s had a couple of exhibitions in Edinburgh and London, is a finallist in the AOP Student Awards and won a competition run by the British Council. We are so chuffed for her, and proud to know her as a friend of our unit. Also, seriously glad that we commissioned her to work with us on the portraiture project before she started getting so famous… 😉

Another year in pictures…

I was at the cinema with two of my fellow leaders last week, and on the car ride home J was surprised to realise we are about to go into our 4th year in Senior Section. For Guide unit I’m currently Assistant Leader for, it will be my 5th year with them – it was the summer of 2011 that I contacted Girlguiding Edinburgh about volunteering with them again after an almost nine year hiatus.

In a few weeks we will start a new school year. I can’t believe it was a year ago that I started back choked with the cold and having old members returning to us – I’m almost convinced it was just so they could chuck the buckets of ice and water over us leaders. 😉 So here is a year in the life of a Girlguiding volunteer…

Letting them pour buckets of ice and water over the Adult Leaders for the MND ice bucket challenge.

Taking part in volunteer recruitment at local university fresher’s fair

Discovering archives in our church hall!

Learning how to do CPR with Guides

Learning about Girl Guides during the war and creating egg collection boxes

Lighting the night with sparklers on Guy Fawkes Night

Laying the Girlguiding poppy wreath at the local cenotaph.

Jo receiving her 10 year service award

Riding the starflyer at the Christmas Market

Decorating mugs while blasting the Christmas music…and eating popcorn!

Ice skating in Princes Street Gardens

Creating a map of the focal points of the community

At Murrayfield Stadium for Girlguiding Edinburgh ‘Thank You’ event for volunteers.

Getting to Know You Bingo!

Image Myth Messages to the World

A night at the LQ Oscars with the Guides and Senior Section

New members of Senior Section make their promise

At Edinburgh College photography studio shooting the Free Being Me portraits

Birthdays mean cake at Senior Section!

After doing Color Me Rad 5k with members of Senior Section and their family/friends to raise money for local youth centre rebuild

A walk up Corstorphine Hill

Toasting marshmallows on Cramond Island

Free Being Me Exhibition

Chinese food night with Senior Section

End of Term Campfires

You know you’re a Guider when this is the backseat of your car…

Free Being Me – the grand finale

In some kind of nutty diary planning, our grand finale to the Free Being Me project turned out to be waaay more crazy than we realised. Sunday 7th June was the day we put in the diary at Easter for the Guides’ exhibition.

First of all, two school holidays  in the month leading up to the exhibition which meant gaps between meetings so the Guides had less time to get the work done. Secondly during that time the other Assistant Leader was on exam leave. Thirdly, I was getting placement done (and the week before I was organising a wikipedia editathon event and a exhibition at a play as part of that) and fourthly, both Anneleen (our photographer) and myself had our final hand-ins for university hitting at the same time. Oh, and our Unit Leader’s kids had sports days and dance exam rehearsals on the week of said exhibition.

I made my family extremely grumpy as I took over the dining room table that week – with only one laptop (mine) at the final two meetings, and I think the same situation was going on at our Unit Leader, Jo’s house.

The girls had put together some stuff about Free Being Me and chosen photos I’d been taking ‘behind the scenes’ at their photo shoot sessions to put together a bit about what they’d done with Anneleen for the event.

This also included their messages speaking out against the beauty myth (the middle display board).

Despite having to take some of their content to type up, I didn’t correct any of it. None of us had been hovering over them too much, and I was blown away by what they wrote. Two of our oldest Guides had done the ‘About Free Being Me’ board (on the left). I used their words for our Press Release which got published on a local news website and the Girlguiding Scotland website.

The Guides had also decided they wanted to share their Free Being Me wall – they each wrote about someone who inspired them…we had parents, siblings, fish, famous women and even Dobby the house-elf from Harry Potter. I’m sure some adults would have told the girls they could only pick real-life humans, but I think it’s perfectly legitimate to be inspired by fictional characters. Sally Fletcher from Aussie soap Home and Away was a role model for me as a young girl.

Leading up the stairs were the inspirational people/fish (some with pictures), they wrote who they were, and why they found them inspirational. On the other side, I had typed out every single quote they had written on numerous pieces of scrap paper and the girls had these going up the stairs on the other side…

I don’t know where half these quotes came from, so I’m sorry if we didn’t give you credit. Most of these came from the girls’ memories or they made them up themselves I think.

And then of course were the portraits.

My favourite part of the day was when I got to be present to a parent seeing their daughter’s portrait for the first time. So many of them gasped and looked at me, Jo or Anneleen and said ‘It really captures xxxxxx’s personality‘. Which of course was the point – the girls did such a great job working with Anneleen to find what makes them – well – them! And Anneleen really captured it with her camera.

The girls raised £130 with a bake sale they organised and decided to have for charity. Frustratingly, the charity they’d chosen had closed down (we only discovered this when the girls asked if I’d email the charity to invite them to the exhibition and tell them they were going to fundraise for them). So note to charities – if you have to close down – please say this on your website, or take your website down!! I was proud of how they welcomed members of the public, served them tea and coffee, and also got very into inventing ‘cocktails’ and putting signs about them outside the heritage centre. ‘Borange’ being the main one (Orange and Apple and Blackcurrant squash mixed together in case you’re wondering).

The paper had asked if we could get a high resolution photo of the girls at the exhibition. Unfortunately not all the Guides were together at the same time due to some of them having other commitments such as rowing and dancing. But we giggled at Anneleen standing on a chair and getting attacked by a fan or light switch while she snapped some pictures of the girls in front of their portraits.

However, much to Jo and I’s chagrin the photo that ended up in the paper was one with the two of us in it. And Anneleen and I have had a giggle that her new artist name should be ‘Anne Leen’ as the editor put in the photo credit rather than ‘Anneleen Lindsay’…

The girls are getting to take their portraits home to keep at the end of term, and I hope that they’ll remember everything we’ve learned together during this last term and a half doing Free Being Me. Now, there’s just our final campfire and last meeting where 7 Brownies who’ll be joining us after the summer will be coming to help with their transition up the sections.

And it seems like two of the girls have used this term as an opportunity to step out and take hold of the opportunities we’ve been telling them about for so long. They are off to their first ever Guide camp this summer – a national one at that (neither of them have been camping with Girlguiding before) and have decided not to move up to Senior Section quite yet..they want to get their Baden-Powell first. 🙂

I ended up with only five days to do my final assignment for university – but it was worth it to support our Guides to accomplish so much. We, as their leaders, are unbelievably proud of them!

Free Being Me: Say Cheese!

We are now finished with our Free Being Me pack…and now we are working on our take action project. Our Guides were in a strange position of already knowing our Take Action plan (or at least a little of it) before we began the pack, as we had already asked if they’d like to do a photography project with a friend of mine, who is currently finishing up her degree in professional photography – Anneleen Lindsay.

 

We have applied for funding to work with Anneleen, to do a photography project with the girls that would incorporate what they’d learned during Free Being Me. Anneleen came to do a workshop with them, and the girls had lots of questions for her about editing and photoshop! Together, they came up with a plan for a collection of portraits that would show the connection the girls have through Girlguiding but also how they are each unique individuals. They decided they would all wear their promise badges and as close to Guide uniform as they could, that all the photos would be on a white background….and after that they each decided on props and shots they’d like to do.

Myself and the other Assistant Leader met the girls and Anneleen at Edinburgh College over two sessions (half the girls one night, the other half a different night). Anneleen talked to them about the different equipment and they were even involved in helping with some of the set up. The picture above shows Anneleen explaining her taking a picture with the grey screen at the start of the session as it gets used as a colour benchmark during the editing process of the photos. The girls also helped each other with props and holding reflectors and so on. She has been great with the girls, even during our second session when I was battling a dodgy stomach and Anneleen was coming down with flu. It wasn’t ideal, but we got through it. The girls have been awesome too, and been so impressed with their maturity and loved seeing their creativity in colloboration with Anneleen’s.

After the holidays the girls are going to get a 10 proofs each to choose which portrait they’d like printed for an exhibition we’ll be holding locally in early June. A local charitable trust has given us use of their building for the day. The girls have given me a list of things they want to do as part of the exhibition to help share with the community what they’ve learned during Free Being Me, and what each portrait represents.

Although it’s been exhausting and a lot of extra work and time, it’s been worth it. After the holidays we’ll be putting our action project plan into well, ACTION! 🙂