This is probably the last virtual event I’ll do with Girlguiding – or at least, the last major event. I have no doubt we’ll do another Zoom Brownie meeting at some point when half the unit gets the dread plague from school, but virtual events are noticeably dwindling. All the big in-person camps and festivals have reappeared in the 2022 calendar and when I did the WAGGGS Thinking Day last month, there were only three attendants across the Saturday and Sunday evening events combined – I know because I was the only one there on Saturday so they gave me the code to come to the Sunday one instead.
I’ve done a virtual sleepover before – we did one for Thinking Day in 2021 alongside our entire region, where they’d provided international-themed activities to be done throughout the weekend and we arranged our meetings to catch some of them “live” and do some of them in our own time – we even got up at 7am on Sunday to renew our Promise at sunrise. Well, the leaders and one guide did. The other appeared at the 9.30am session looking much brighter-eyed.
This one is just the Guides and they invited my Brownies to take part. I have four girls, three of whom will do virtual events and we’ve ended up with just one taking part. She joins in everything and she’s ten and a half, so she’ll be joining them full-time in September. It’s good for her to get to meet them. So, the way this one works is that we all have a goodie bag with most of the resources, including a timetable. The Zoom codes are on the front and then we’ve got activities to do together in the meetings and things to do in between.
This is why I haven’t done a virtual sleepover: it would never cross my mind to put together a huge shiny goodie bag of resources like this and definitely not in a massive bag that even fits the theme. Well, the real reason is that I don’t really have the adult support to run an event across most of a weekend and I’m kind of disinclined to do it for just three girls, especially as two probably won’t turn up. But, still. Look at this!
First, there’s a little guidebook. It contains the Zoom codes for the three meetings, a kit list for stuff you need beyond what’s in the goodie bag, a timetable including the things to do between the meetings and a recipe for the eggy bread on Sunday morning. You can see it now because it happened over a week ago and if you use our Zoom codes, you won’t find any Guides or Brownies!
The first activity was Jumping Clay. These went wild during lockdown because it works really well in virtual meetings. Jumping Clay send out little packets of silk clay, meticulously weighed on the sort of scales so that everyone gets precisely the right amount of each colour. During lockdown, they were booked up and the lady who ran my adult county session said that she’d reached the point where she was dreaming about weighing out clay. We had three models made at the same time – the Guides were making mini Guides, the Guide leaders were making mini leaders and my one Brownie and I were making mini Brownies, because I’d already made a leader. So the little packets of clay were also in the goodie bags.
Everyone else got pizza bases and sauces for Saturday dinner but I don’t eat pizza so the leader-in-charge didn’t waste a base on me. In the evening, we had a bag of craft materials for a craft to follow up on the Jumping Clay session and then afterwards, we had a bag of smores stuff, including a candle and a skewer to make our smores. And finally, we had a WhatsApp group. It’s actually the everyday Guide one but the two of us were added just for the weekend so we could share in the pictures and not feel like we were outsiders.
Session 1 was 4-5pm on Saturday, the Jumping Clay. Steph came along to the session and she talked us through three different models. Fundamentally they’re all the same. Two pea-sized pieces for the feet, two Malteser-sized pieces for the legs, use most of your big blog of colour for the body, then mix your skintone and create your hair colour. Except that the Guides had long sleeves and a pocket, and the leaders had a polo shirt, it’s the same model in three sets of colours. Oh, the Guides struggled! We had constant “I’m lost”, “I’m confused”, “where are we?” and “I’ve already used up all my blue”. My Brownie, youngest of them all, got on fine! The leaders got on fine but that’s to be expected. One Guide gave up altogether and had to bring her clay to Guides last week for the leaders to do it with her in person. The one thing that took me by surprise was that our mini mes were standing up. When I made my mini leader last year, she was sitting down, as were all the models I’ve seen across social media in the last two years. I wasn’t at all convinced she’d actually stand but she does.
Here’s a snapshot of my work in progress:
Then we left the Guides to build a den and make their pizzas. To make it feel less like three virtual meetings and more like a virtual sleepover, they were supposed to build a den somewhere in the house and sleep in it rather than their beds. The leader-in-charge put a pop-up tent and fairy lights in her living room. I considered putting my foam mat out in my office but the door doesn’t close because there’s a hook on it and I can’t reach the curtains because of the furniture so I just slept in my own bed, as did one of the other leaders who had covid at the time and couldn’t be spreading it all over the house. Over the two hours between Saturday meetings, we got bombarded over WhatsApp with pictures of mini mes, pizzas and dens.
Then it was time for the second evening session. We did three activities: a scavenger hunt whereby you look for a thing to fulfil a purpose but not an obvious thing. What I mean by that is “we’re on a desert island. Find something that will keep the sun off you, but not a hat because that’s too obvious”. Find something to eat off but not a plate because that’s too obvious. Find something to carry water. That’s my favourite. That’s my party trick. When I was a Guide myself, I learned how to make a paper cup and it still astonishes me some twenty, twenty-five, years later that if I fold a sheet of printer paper (or even a paper towel if you’re careful), it can support water.
The second activity was desert island bingo. We had one clear winner and then five girls in second place. Oh yes, they each had a bingo card. I didn’t get a bingo card so I forgot to include that in my goodie bag. Five or so girls all waiting for “cave” to come up so they could all shout bingo at once. Extra prizes had to be bought.
And third, my activity. It may be Castaway desert island themed, but it’s still a Guiding sleepover and therefore we still need a campfire and some singing and that’s my speciality. It doesn’t work so well over Zoom but we did get the voices up at last during Thunderation. Leader-in-charge had a lovely video of a crackling campfire by a river for a virtual background during that one, which meant I couldn’t hold up the words for them and we also had to mute it because you can’t have two noises at once going on Zoom.
After that, they lit their candles and made their smores and we got a succession of photos and a video or two too. Then they used their craft pack to make a desert island for their mini me to live on. It’s a week later and I still haven’t made mine but I’ve got photos of the others.
Then it was sleepover time. We’re all getting tired of virtual stuff and even I had had plenty after two Zoom meetings in under four hours. I should have lit my candle and done my craft but instead I jumped in the bath. If this had been a little later in the year and if I had been bothered, I might have put up my tent in the garden. But then again, we were back on Zoom at 9am on Sunday.
Nine o’clock on Sunday morning and I’ve got to be at my desk, fully dressed! The Guides had made eggy bread, the first pictures arriving at 7.47 in the morning but I’d just had some toast very quickly. Good thing I was fully dressed because the first activity was some tai chi – or at least, the version of it given on a Unit Meeting Activity card. A sort of intro to tai chi to people who know nothing about it as taught by people who also know nothing about it. In a similar way, I’ve done boxing and ballet on Brownie UMA cards in the past.
Then we sat down for a few minutes to play a game. We’re on a desert island and Koala is going to name an animal. Then she’s going to pick someone to name an animal which starts with the last letter of the animal she’s just said, and so on. We did get in a bit of a loop of “tiger”, “….rabbit?”, “tiger”, “rhino”, “orang-utan”, “n….n… newt!”, “tiger”, “rabbit”, “tiger”, “rabbit” and we also had pterodactyl (and as a response to rabbit! I decided it wasn’t in the spirit of a sleepover to jump on an eleven-year-old over her spelling).
Last, we had a craft activity using stuff from their kit list: using newspaper, build the tallest free-standing flagpole you possibly can, with a flag on top to attract attention and get rescued. My Brownie won, frankly. 1.82m and stood up by itself. One of the Guides actually won with some three and a half metres of flagpole which had to be stuck out of the window but I guarantee that a three-metre tower of newspaper does not stand up by itself.
And with that, we were done! Well, not quite. The Guides had badges presented to them at their usual Tuesday meeting and the leader-in-charge turned up to our night hike at Brownies on the Monday to present the badges to me and my girl. They’re good badges! They’re by Pawprint Family and although we didn’t quite stick to their Castaway Adventures syllabus, it was used as inspiration and anyway, it’s always nice to get a badge for an event and this was the perfect appropriate one – not an accident, the sleepover was designed around the badge, not the badge found to match the theme.
Our next sleepover will hopefully be a real one. The leader-in-charge mentioned it and of course, my Brownie was very enthusiastic so she’s invited, although I think the rest of my Brownies probably won’t be. I believe my second-oldest is only a year and a quarter younger than her but because they’re a July and October birthday, she’s two school years younger and you can’t have a Year 4 at a Guide event. I suppose at some point I’m going to have to at least do an overnight licence so I can do sleepovers of my own but at least when they go to Guides, camps and residentials are a new adventure that makes it worthwhile moving up. And I do tend to join them on camp. I’m a great extra pair of hands, especially in the kitchen.
But yeah, plague virtual sleepover!