1st Melbourn Guides

‘A Guide faces challenge, and learns from her experiences.’ During September we embraced (obviously not literally) the challenge of meeting outdoors and then moved back onto Zoom with the benefit of experience for October’s meetings. In socially distanced groups of fifteen, the girls enjoyed an outdoor treasure hunt around the village one September evening; in pairs, the girls had to answer observational questions around the streets and suggest improvements for vacant buildings and plots of land. Ideas included a dog grooming parlour beside the vet’s surgery, a children’s play area and sweet shop at South Cambs Motors and wildlife-friendly plants in front of the Primary School. On the other evening they played modified footgolf on the Moor and did a tree hunt in the Millennium Copse. By October it was too dark to meet outdoors, and as we have no venue for indoor meetings, it was back to Zoom sessions. We started with a game of personality bingo where the girls had to find others who shared their interests, appearance and family background. After a fun quiz on the Guide laws, we finished with a Guiding themed scavenger hunt of items around the house.

Over the following two weeks we finished the Skills Builder ‘Take Action’ by suggesting ideas for a global issues campaigning magazine. Popular themes included reducing plastic pollution, climate change awareness, Black Lives matter, and the dangers of social media. As a fun way to cover the threat of animal extinction, the girls learnt to draw cartoons of a penguin, a tiger and an elephant and then used them in a simple guessing game. We finished the half term with a campfire themed evening; the girls were challenged to make up actions to a classic campfire song; we had a

Alexandra with her cake

Izzy and her cake

Bea’s bonfire cake music quiz, four new girls made their Guide Promise. At the end, they all made s’mores by melting a marshmallow over a candle or in the microwave, and sandwiching it between two chocolate biscuits.

The Bake-Off competition is always popular with our Guides, so we had a Halloween themed cake Showstopper challenge over the half term holiday, followed by a live technical challenge in our Zoom meeting on Thursday 5th November. The standard and creativity of the showstopper cakes was incredible, and the girls’ attempts at the (unrehearsed) challenge of making brandy snaps were very impressive too. The judges, Guiders from Barrington who didn’t know the girls, chose Alexandra and Izzy (pictured) to be joint winners with their beautiful cakes and perfectly curled brandy snaps. We would love to return to some normal meetings in January and we would welcome some more adult leaders/helpers as we’ll have to split into two groups. If you would like to know more, please contact me on (01763) 261443 or email melbournguides@gmail.com. You can also look on the girlguiding.org.uk website to find out more.

Hilary Marsh

Emma Dow’s graveyard cake