Brigades
9TH HALIFAX GIRLS BRIGADE PARENTS & FRIENDS NIGHT
Wednesday 25th June 2008
The Girls' Brigade P&F evening was held on Wednesday 25th June 2008 with guests Rev Brian Brown, Mr Andy Kaye, Miss Diane Wade, Mrs Winifred Carr and Mrs Dorothy Moore.
CAPTAINS LOG Star Date 2008 (Captain Lisa)
Another Girls' Brigade year is drawing to a close and what a year it has been. It's great to see about 50 girls take the time to come to Girls' Brigade on a Wednesday evening although attendance at Parade on the 1st Sunday morning of each month has been very disappointing. Girls Brigade is a Church based organisation and we would ask you to encourage your girls to attend at least on Parade Sundays. Naturally, parents are also welcome.
I personally would like to thank all of our leaders and helpers who have worked so hard on a weekly basis to make Girls' Brigade fun and interesting for the girls. Also, to the members of the Church and beyond, who have been active in helping the girls with badge-work etc. We appreciate your help and encouragement. Many of you will now know that Robin and myself have come to the end of our Girls' Brigade life and are retiring this summer due to personal commitments. We are also losing Judith from the Explorer sections and Mel from the junior section leaving only three regular leaders to look after your children. In order for Girls' Brigade to continue we need your support and assistance on a Wednesday evening.
I would personally like to thank all of the leaders for their continued work and dedication to GB and for their support making the last 7.5 years so memorable.
The girls and the leaders have all worked really hard this year to bring you an entertaining Parents and Friends night. I hope that you all enjoy yourselves and have a night to remember.
For your information, the last meeting will be Wednesday 16th July. Meetings from now until the summer break will be non-uniform. We will be back for the new season on Wednesday 10th September 2008.
Thank you all for coming and I hope that you enjoy the evening.
QUEENS AWARD
Congratulations to former members, Lucy Crowther and Gemma Horner, who have both completed their work for the Queens Award, and will receive their brooch here tonight.
EXPLORERS REPORT (Judith, Claire and Caroline)
The Explorer Section has seen another good year pass, with excellent attendance by our 14 girls. They have completed the Spiritual section of the badgework, which was learning the Lord's Prayer, which was taught to them step by step by brigaders in an imaginative way. They also had fun making Sock Puppets.
For the Education section of the badgework we joined with the other group, creating pieces of Artwork to sell at the auction, which was a great success, and the girls enjoyed drawing members of their family.
The Physical badgework was indeed physical, the girls had to learn 2 songs to skip to as well as learn to jump in and out of a skipping rope, all the girls can now do this with confidence and really enjoy skipping as a group.
Our Service badgework was helping in the kitchen where the girls has to help with making a simple sandwich and a cold drink, help to wash up and learn how to peal a potato which lead to some fun as the girls did some potato printing!
None of this would be possible without the help of our volunteers. Unfortunately for us, Judith will be leaving us this summer, and I'm sure all the girls would like to join in thanking her and wishing her all the best. She will be sadly missed by all of us. Of course this means that once again we are looking for assistants to help us to continue the Explorer section - we need one adult for every five girls, so we definitely need extra help, or we will not be able to recruit in September when the girls leaving us for the Junior section are promoted. We hopefully want to keep the maximum of 15 girls in the New Year!
If anyone would like to know more about helping, please ask any of the officers.
JUNIOR REPORT (Andrea, Janice, Mel and Claire)
P&F night again! They seem to come round faster each year!
The girls have completed their Junior Circle badge work. We ended the year with our Service badge, learning about birds - garden birds, sea birds and birds of prey. The girls played an albatross game, which helped them appreciate the dangers albatrosses face, and also made a bird feeder for the garden. Some girls loved mixing the ingredients and making a mess, whilst others had to hold their noses!
Physical badgework was tackled well with much enthusiasm. The girls had to choreograph their own dance routines, and performed the final results for parents. They were given a free reign with this, and it seemed to go down well! The results were very pleasing - the girls didn't realise badgework could be fun!
Our Educational badge was Art. For this we went up to Ogden to draw a landscape picture, and also something close to our hearts. Some magnificent works were produced, and we auctioned these pictures, which raised the money to pay for the Christmas parties.
For our Spiritual badge we studied the Lord's Prayer , and re-wrote our own versions. Our Minister, Brian, called in while we were doing these and liked the alternatives - especially the rap version!
As the session comes to a close 9 of our girls will move on to the Senior section, and we look forward to welcoming 6 Explorers into the Junior section next year. A big thank you to the girls and all parents for your support. Hope to see you all in September.
SENIORS & BRIGADERS REPORT (Lisa & Robin)
This year we have had four Brigader girls who have been a huge help to the leaders and to the younger sections, especially Lauren and Amy, who have excelled since completing their Leadership Training, and we have had between 8 & 10 regular attendees in the Senior section.
Badgework for the girls this year has included artwork & framing of the pieces, an off site field trip exercise rock climbing, the study of the Lord's Prayer and vehicle maintenance / car safety.
The Brigaders have an extra piece of badgework to complete in preparation for their Brigader Brooch and have been running a weekly tuck shop for the other members to enjoy.
A huge thank you to Brendan, David and Paul at the Rock Climbing Centre for their weekly meetings with us in January - we apparently have some real naturals among us! Thanks to Robin for arranging the auction for the artwork/framing badgework and also for the vehicle maintenance / car safety work. Also, a thank you to Janice and Andrea for helping the Brigaders with their tuck shop.