Rangers on a Killer Trail in London

My last batch of Rangers are now all about to go to university, I'd been saying for a long time I would take them to London to get some experience of the transport systems and just to give them a confidence boost.

Covid and life got in the way, so we were up to our final possible date we could all make it and the weather annouced 35C.  I really wondered how sensible travelling would be and reconsidered my risk assessment a number of times, if these girls had been younger I would have cancelled but they are old enough and few enough that we could be very flexible with the plans.  

I had asked a couple of my now ex rangers that live and work around London what they thought might be good and cheap, these girls had done the monopoly challenge with me years ago. They recommended a 'killer trail'.  

So armed with laminated cards, a heavy duty sun umbrella, more water than I felt happy carrying and the refill app off we went.  It was interesting that I was the only person I saw using an umbrella for sunshade - the one I use now is a silver reflective vented one. It's fantastic and created shade for the whole group at the right angle. 

Luck was on our side, the long hot summer meant a track fire which had upset all the trains, initially it was a worry we would be able to get there at all but our planned train started at our town rather than the big stations further up line so we got onto an on-time empty train and had a 'converted to standard' first class carriage - we played cards all the air conditioned way in.

 

The tube was hot, but most people had decided to stay away I think and it was quieter than usual even at peak times.

We did walked our way around the WestEnd killertrail (murdermystery type tour/quiz). I recommend them as a cheap way to fill a 3 hours. 

You are looking for clues on streets, statues etc to help you solve a mystery.

It's not particularly hard but it is a better focus than just walking around,

We stopped many times, just sitting in a shady area, we took advantage of different places to refill water bottles some were happy to do so, some took a little buttering up, but a uniform and a necker can take you a long way and with a lot of neck I even managed to get Greggs to fill our water bottles whilst we were stood next to a fridge of bottles selling water!

We did also buy water on the south bank but also got Pret to turn on the refill tap so we could do a double top up, buy & fill. 

An ice-cream stop sat on the steps near the Duke of York statue lasted nearly an hour, just cooling, chilling, chatting, they even starting to sing some camp songs and tourist took photos of us!! That is the beauty of an itinary with no time pressures at all and the flexibility of rangers in small groups.  

I’m pleased with how I led them,  which was my usual style of from behind. I let them get off at the wrong tube station, work that out, all get back on and have another go, gives them confidence to know it doesn’t matter. Showed them that it’s normal to have 300+ people waiting for platform information before the barrier opens and those pushing through don’t know something you don’t! How to get water bottle refills without buying it! And how to manage ‘broken’ tickets (after one Ranger kept her ticket in her phone case). It was interesting watching what worried different girls at different times.

I was a little worried about taking them on my own, I normally like to have a second leader around to bounce off.  But actually it was a boost to my confidence in my leader skills too. Leading from behind is sometimes very swan like, you look calm and all knowing whilst your mind is constantly doing overtime! 

We did the trail, we had a bit of fun in M&M world, we had a wander to Horseguards and Downing Street, passed Westminster, a sit on the Southbank soaking up the buskers and summer atmosphere.

Before heading  home in a non-airconditioned train. Which was an opportunity to show them how long a bottle of frozen water can stay frozen in an isulated cover, how putting it on the back of your neck is an instant cooler - we passed it around the group each having a go more than once!

Another grand day out.

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Rangers do Playdough - again

Years ago I used to make Playdough all the time with Cog,  buying it is expensive and with youngster having a tendency to eat it, I wanted to be sure I knew what she was eating!

I think knowing how to make it is a life skill, to be honest!  I have done playdough making before with Rangers but recently in an online forum I spotted an activity that a leader said worked really well over zoom.  I can't find the entry now to credit the leader with so if you recognise yourself leave me a comment and I can thank you, as it was a really relaxing, fun night that came in just when they were doing their back to school exams and needed something easy to take their mind off it all. 

Here is my well tried recipe for playdough:

 

1 cup plain flour (100grams)
1/2 cup salt (150 grams)
1 tablespoon cream of tartar (cooking aisle near bicarb!)
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 cup hot water (200 ml) from kettle with a splash of food colouring

Just put them into a bowl (it helps if the hot coloured water goes in last) and mix well, when it comes together just kneed it a bit and you have play dough as good as the bought stuff.

I always forget the 'use warm water bit' and put all the cold 'ingredients' into a pan on the stove and stir it until it's mixed and comes together to form a ball, let it cool a little and kneed it a bit. Either the hot water 'just mix' method or the cold water 'cook it on the stove top' method is just fine. And neither will take you longer than 10 minutes.

Once they'd made the dough, they had a few minutes to each model an animal. One point for it to be original (i.e. none of the other members of the group had done the same animal) and a bonus point if it was recognisable as the animal you said it was!

Then each of them took it in turns to give instructions to model an animal and the others made it without knowing what it was.  They really liked that part. (The one that started, split your dough into 24 equal parts was interesting!)

They then had a race to see how quickly they could form the word, Rangers from the dough.

Finally they had to use just the R from Rangers and model something that represented themselves. We got peace signs, sunglasses, microphones and one poor ranger splatted her dough and said the mess represented her life right now.   It is amazing how simple activities bring out those opportunities for them to express deep feelings.

It was a good Ranger zoom night and I really recommend it.

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Rangers Back in the Wild

So Girlguiding finally decided that 'face to face' meetings could be allowed.  But there were so many rules about how many, where, how and a bookcase worth of paperwork and risk assessments to do that, they insisted, needed to be submitted two weeks prior to the event date.

So to be frank, they were playing lip service to 'we care about girl's mental health' and had shoved common sense into a dark corner.

But I managed to get my commissioner to agree to a no-brainer night and with a risk assessment as long as my arm and carrying more PPE than a surgeon on call, we set off over the socially distancing fields.

And what a night for it

The girls kept their distance naturally, but these large sweeping fields just lend themselves to that.

   

You can't kick up the sweet smelling hay with people too close, they just get in the way.

A gentle warm breeze carried the beautiful smell of a summer evening.

The sun started to set

We were headed towards home.

Chattering brightly.

We are so lucky to live here

As the sun went down the damp chill immediately set over the hay fields.

As we got to the meeting point and the more distant girls were picked up by parents, the closer to home girls started to text parents to say "don't pick up us, it's too lovely to get in a car, we want to walk the rest of the way home."

I rang all the parents to check they were happy and off the girls set again. I watched them disappear down the road, no longer my responsibility but still they socially distanced, chattering and ambling along just the same.

And I stood and watched the sun go down fully before heading the final mile home in the twilight.

And I thought 'we got this' but as it turns out we 'didn't got this' because I'm now struggling to come up with another 'face to face' night at a place we are allowed to meet with a covid safe activity etc

I can't walk them around fields forever but we all need to be together.  Virtual is great but what people really need is people. And some of my Rangers need to be with their safe space peer group so badly.

I'm not feeling the love for Girlguiding and its seemingly endless ways to say 'computer ses no' 

But I am feeling the love for the Rangers and their needs and we will get through this.

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Rangers Mission to Moth - online meeting

Leicester went into stricter lock-down just as the rest of the country was starting to party in the pubs and get out and about.  A number of my Rangers were really upset about it.  They'd played by the rules and felt they were now being punished for something they didn't do.  To cheer them up I offered an extra meeting that week on the Saturday night.  We'd been saying for a while we wanted to do 'Mission to Moth' so it was declared the thing to do.

It needs a dark night - so that was school boy error number 1.  It was not going to be early to bed!

The kit was sorted and the messages started to come in like "I've not got a banana" and "we haven't got beer" - they'd had 5 days to think about it!  I gave them the best advice I could "Google it for a substitute then" !


















I was not totally surprised to see that Charnmud was still making an appearance on my kit.  That damned stuff will go to the grave with me!

We all got on with the prep whilst it was still light.

School boy error number 2!  When you want to show your bowl contents to the camera - don't tip it up over the keyboard of your daughter's laptop.  Brown sugar mixed in cola with smashed banana seeping under the keys - suspect that will turn out to be an expensive mistake.








The rangers got on with the task in hand whilst I mopped and prayed.

And chattered whilst it got dark.

It was a pleasant evening spent but unfortunately cold and windy...

...which was probably school boy error number 3.













So between 6 of us we managed to attract 1 moth - yes one!   I have more than that in my bedroom some nights!


But what matters was at least two Rangers said "I've really enjoyed tonight, I found it really relaxing, it was so good to get away from everything and just watch and chat"


So in my eyes that's mission accomplished, happy girls, that's all I ever want to see.

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Rangers online Escape rooms

A few weeks ago we started with a quite quick and fairly straight forward Harry Potter Escape room freely available at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflNxNM0jzbZJjUqOcXkwhGTfii4CM_CA3kCxImbY8c3AABEA/viewform

It took the Rangers maybe 20 mins to get through it.

So another week we moved onto the www.saintmichaelsscouts.org.uk/escape/

They enjoyed this one more, it is really well done and you moved interactively around rooms hunting for objects and solving clues.

You need to register in advance, and it would be good to make a donation.



We had 4 working on it all together as a group, they said afterwards that maybe it would have been more controlled if they still all went in as individuals but only one person was doing the typing.  

Do look at the hints (I printed them out and used them to guide a little at the beginning.) Also note that you cannot start the meeting and join it from the same computer it does mess it up.

It took the Rangers about an hour to do this escape room challenge. 

To pad time out to the end of the meeting they did the Camp Mystery.  You can download it from here

This is not my resource, I cannot remember where I picked it up from and if you want to claim copyright of it, please contact me

This took the Rangers about 15 minutes as a group, with me screen sharing it and reading the clues and them telling me what to type in to help them solve it.

It's easy for this age, but everything in life doesn't have to be hard, as long as it is fun!

So where we are headed next if they fancy another night at it is one of the following:

https://www.escapedurham.co.uk/mr-x

https://www.escapedurham.co.uk/thehunters

A Scouty one:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdFLHw9zTCyOAP5AbgQlJwC9b4_k_F3qx1bltOaF5vOjxV48w/viewform

And a what-3-words trail :

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSepBDLBp9dDgAI_uYTYNOdxXJa4YqWz3wiKujvSGZofV2cbGA/viewform

So plenty of resources to keep any group of Rangers keen on this type of activity going through a couple of virtual meetings.

Have Fun.

Welcome to our Escape Room Experience. I created this escape room experience for my scouts to play during the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK as part of our virtual meetings. It proved a great hit with both the scouts and their families so I have decided to release it to the wider scouting community to....

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Rangers Expect the Unexpected and Alphabetical Scavenger hunt - online meeting

We started the online meeting night with the UMA Expect the Unexpected.

The girls were basically doing  improvisation and we followed the card fairly well until they needed to 'stay in character' for a wacky part and some of my quieter girls were really struggling.  Luckily another Ranger came to the rescue by randomly talking about a childhood book she'd been reminded off during the course of the activity.  The little Mole who knew it was none of his business.  Which basically led to each ranger being an animal and stating why they knew it wasn't their poo on the moles head.  Yes bizarre but it did set the ball rolling, the girl's imaginations working and them in fits of laughter.

This led very nicely into a meeting idea from a Ranger leader in a leader's online forum.  An Alphabetical scavenger hunt. I sent the girls off to find something starting with each letter from the work ALPHABETICAL.

They all showed their article for each letter in turn.

If they were the only one to have the object then they got a point.  If anyone else had the same object, neither of them got a point.

It was also really good fun and I felt it tied in nicely to the 'improvisation' skills night as they tried to justify why their object was totally different to the other girls, despite them being the same thing!!

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Rangers Get Rafty - online meeting

 Get Rafty UMA worked really well on line

As preparation I asked them to prototype a raft they could float in a bowl of water and it should be able to carry a cup of water and then told them they would need to make it from scratch during the meeting and float it.


And so they did

 Some were simple - but it worked!

 Some were lashed to perfection

 And floated very well - this Ranger will be an engineer when she is older or I will eat my hat - she designs some very clever things naturally in many of our meetings.

 There were a lot of corks being used in many rafts - they all assured me it was because there were plenty in the houses at the moment!

 Odd concept but again it achieved the original specification!

 They all really enjoyed doing it.

I recommend this one for an online (outdoor) meeting

We will do this one again when we can get together and head out for a walk up the river to float rafts properly.

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Rangers Land Art - online meeting

 Another UMA that worked really well online was Land Art

I just read the card out to them and set them off on it.

 A life size mermaid  ("What I want to be")

 "Where I am right now"

 "My home town"

The hill it is on, the countryside, the industrialisation and new builds are all in here.

 "The holiday I didn't have"

This image left me completely moved and will be the lasting image of the current lock down that I remember for many. many year to come.

Profound.

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Rangers 20 random things - online meeting

We needed to get Reflect Stage 5 Constructive Communities finished to allow 1 ranger to finish a theme.  It felt like a tricky challenge to do online

We started with tower building, each of them had been told to have random things ready to build a tower.  Some of them were more random than others




















but this alone was not enough to meet an aim of co-operation and compromise.




















But another leader had posted a 20 Random things exercise into a forum so I asked the Rangers to bring 20 random things to the meeting too.   And then read out this list to them one thing at a time:

1. Something made of a textile
2. The oldest thing in your collection
3. Something with writing on it
4. Something with a story that you’d like to share.
5. Something heavy
6. Something you made
7. Something damaged
8. Something that was a gift
9. The thing you’ve had longest
10. Something you bought yourself
11. The most brightly-coloured thing you have left
12. Something you’d like to give away
13. Something that you’ve given a name to
14. Your most recent acquisition from what’s left
15. Something that makes you smile
16. Something that you can’t think why you’ve kept it
17. The softest thing you have left
18. Something hard
19. You decide what to get rid of this round – there’s only one round left!
20. And finally – something that is only one colour

Items can be used once only, and then put aside. The aim is to be sufficiently ingenious to have nothing left at the end!  And one of them managed it.

But here is the twist, I did it a second time with them and the challenge was they all had to finish with nothing or they all lost but item 'swapping' between them was allowed.  They had to work together as a group working out what items they might 'trade' to ensure they all got through every round.

It worked well, they talked about their things, shared their things (virtually) and more of them ended up with no things at the end.

It felt like a sterling team effort from them and the 'I want to win' nature of some of them was challenged hard.

So acknowledgement to Caroline Selwyn-Jones for a great idea for an online night, which I then hacked into a team came, and hammered into a skills builder!!

Flexible Guiding rules!

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Rangers Silver Linings - online meeting

I'm going to recommend UMA Silver Linings as a good one to do as a part of an online meeting and especially at this difficult time of Corona lock down.

I asked each girl try think of something that had happened that had left them feeling disappointed.

We didn't share them yet.











Whilst they pondered that we made origami hearts

And then one by one I asked the first one what their disappointment was, then asked another girl how they would feel if it happened to them, how they would relate.  Then finally asked another girl what the silver lining was to the event.  Slowly we went around each of them.

Some brought up cancelled sporting events (how well I related to that one), some were upset they weren't going to sit their exams, some were talking about cancelled holidays or holidays that were no longer to be booked because their parents no longer had jobs.  But slowly they were discussed and silver linings funny or true were found.

Then we went back to the hearts and they each were to write something positive on  them before popping them into a box or jar (I had asked them to find prior to the meeting).

It felt like a really positive meeting, not at all as 'heavy' as it sounds writing it down here.

Another UMA to tick off for the programme that is usual at this time.

We combined this meeting with a legend of 1000 cranes, but I had them make those cranes in advance and whilst we talked about them and decided to send them to Japan, we didn't spend as long over it as we did this one.

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Rangers Online (S)Leapover

Our county ran a residential over Easter (yes, during lockdown) That involved as many of us that wanted to getting involved in an Easter Adventure Party.

Across the County we saw photos of little Rainbows and Brownies, bigger Guides and Rangers putting up tents in their back gardens or sleeping in baths and everything in between.

 I ran a ranger online session 3pm to 5pm.  5 of them turned up, in fancy dress.

 We made easter rabbits.

















We managed to pull in a bit of program with a scavenger hunt, which they really enjoyed and I will do again when short on virtual meeting ideas as it took minutes to 'sort out'!

We finished that session off with Disney movies charades - which included a girl taking her phone out to the road and pointing at tar for Tarzan - "get back inside"  we all yelled!

 At 8pm we kicked off again, the fancy dress got better with a mad hatter (wish I could show you the makeup and hat) and a full on rabbit with a rhubarb leaf hat, joining us.

Some built real fires

Some were nagged to got put shoes on because camp rules still apply even if the leader is not there!

 Some opted for the indoor fire

 Most packed a bag despite only moving to another room.

 Some set up dens

Some went full bivvy.

We played online Bingo, Pictionary (using Zoom's whiteboard and a random word generator), heads up with a phone app, Beetle with online dice 

We even managed to play Guess Who.  We made fake moustaches and beards, wore hats and glasses etc I was surprised at how well that worked out

We filled 5 hours with games and chatter.

It was fairly intense for me as a leader but it did give me a chance to try out a few games with my very forgiving and inventive Rangers before I run a games night for the leaders in my district.

I'll let you know how that goes!

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