Our unit is just starting the Key to Me, and being the end of the year I really wanted to find something special for our girls to do. I knew it was recently Mental Health Week in Canada, and there were many related Instant Meeting activities we could incorporate into our meeting. I also remembered an idea I had had as a Spark Guider – positivity mirrors, where the girls take a simple mirror and decorate it with positive sayings.
So the night of our meeting arrived, and as the girls entered they were given a sheet with their name on it and told to come up with one positive word for each letter in their name. The girls definitely got creative – as they discovered, Y and X were not easy letters!
After our Brownie opening, I introduced the topic of self-esteem to the girls by asking them if they knew what it was. Most weren’t really sure as I don’t think the term had been mentioned before, but they seemed to have an idea of what it was. We talked about ways to improve your self-esteem and I then introduced the positivity mirrors. I had made a sample mirror beforehand (to work out some of the kinks and make sure everything worked), and I could tell the girls could not wait to get started.
The first step was to paint the canvases and right from the start the girls’ creativity and individuality shone through. I had assumed the girls would just choose one colour for their canvas, but most went with a rainbow of colours and patterns with some abstract painting thrown in as well.
After painting the canvases (and one set of purple footprints across the gym floor!), the girls set about to find the words and phrases that best described them and use them to decorate their paintings. With 16 Brownies meeting in a school gym, it can get pretty loud, so to hear almost complete silence during the activity was something really moving. You could tell the girls were really proud of their work and couldn’t wait to show off their work to their parents.
It was a fun activity that I will definitely do again, and I hope that the girls will use these mirrors if ever they need a little pick-me-up.
Guest post by Laura Litvack. Laura is a Guider with the 2nd Northwood Brownies in Pierrefonds, Quebec, and District Commissioner for Northshore District.
Coming soon! Our Be You Challenge (launches October) is designed to help girls become more self-confident while building their self-esteem. And our new Mighty Minds Challenge (launches January 2017) focuses on the importance of building positive mental health in girls.
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