Elephant Trail - Midlands Arts Explosion

 I told you about the Ranger milk bottle elephant making night.

The 2 brownie units, rainbow unit and guide unit in my village also made them.

 They came to stay at my house for a while.  A ranger and myself went looking for suitable homes for them for a week.  Most people were very happy to oblige.  I typed up a trail, a route map and some 'left/right, cross over such and such road' instructions.  I handed the trail out to the units then spent a weekend re-homing the elephants.

 Each had a letter with it.  This gave the girls something to 'collect' as they went around and at the end of the trail the letters spelt out the first line of our promise.

 Some elephants enjoyed a pint!

 Some had their hair done.

 And some were as good as gold tucked up on a window sill.

I've been out with 2 brownie units this week helping them to do it.  I caught up with the Guides at the end of their night of 'trailing' at the chip shop. The Rainbows are going too, I've done a short cut version for them in case the leaders felt the full trail was too far.

The girls have all really enjoyed doing it.   They loved spotting their own elephants.

It's allowed a Ranger the opportunity to get a phase 2 octant with her efforts in setting it up and going out with the brownies when she is not a young leader normally.

It's given all the girls a good opportunity to be more familiar with their local environment when so many of them are normally just ferried backwards and forwards to school.  This took them round a large proportion of the village.  They loved saying where they lived or pointing to friends and family houses.  We even talked about odd and even numbers on different sides of the roads and counting up and down in twos.

It's given a lot of people in the community the chance to interact with us and see all of us out and about.

It's given the units two planned nights this term.  Making and doing.

And it's given just under 100 girls the opportunity to earn their Midlands art explosion on the move badge.

It's taken up a lot of my time and I still have to go back out and recollect the elephants and take them back to their owners.  But overall I'm really pleased with what I have achieved with this.