So I feel that I had a pretty successful bank holiday weekend. As this week is half term here in the UK it means that the Rainbows do not meet, which gives me some time to catch up on planning, printing, orders and all the other fun stuff included in running a Rainbow Unit.
This half term we are working towards our 30th Birthday Badge and holding a birthday party at the end of the term. Most of our resources were printable, so my printer took a beating when I printed over 100 different recourse sheets for activities, which my lovely mum agreed to cut out while she was on half term (she had then finished within 24 hours).
I recently discovered the north west region shop that I can get all my badges from instead of having to travel 2 hours on the bus to my local shop with the chance of them not having what I need.
Today, I finally got around to sorting badges and what we needed to order / stock up on. And to my surprise, I ordered a whopping 81 badges for my unit. Yes 81!!!!
Now I know that it must sound crazy and I can promise you that we do not normally go through any where near that amount of badges in a term usually, but the Rainbows 30th Birthday set the badge bar high this term.
As a unit, we normally only need around 20-25 badges which includes 1 interest / challenge badge and any promise badges / extra badges that we may need.
Last half term the Rainbows finished and completed their Roundabout Global Adventure, this was their one interest badge which covered 4 weeks worth of meetings (17).
Half way through the term one of our Rainbows came in with a short hair cut, which mum informed us that she had cut her hair of to be donated to make wigs for children with cancer, so we ordered a ‘Rainbows Well Done’ badge to be presented to her at the end of the term. (1)
This term we have 6 girls making their promise, and unfortunately we only have 3 metal promise badges in the box, which means that I had to order 3 more. (3)
So as you can see, the limit for this terms badges would have been 21, but the 30th Birthday badges sent us way up.
When it comes to challenge badges and event badges, we always buy enough for the leaders to get a badge, and one to go onto our circle unit blanket, so we have 17 Rainbows, 3 leaders and 1 blanket.
As for the official Birthday Badge, we bought the North West Region Birthday Badges as this was the challenge pack that we decided to do and they were available to buy on the shop which meant it was easier to buy. (21)
At the beginning of the term the girls all make a birthday card to send out to units around the world, this was a a lot of fun for the girls and we sent out our 5th Birkenhead North Rainbow strips to units around the UK as well as Australia, America and Canada. By doing this we purchased the girls a 30th Birthday Card Swap Badge through the Facebook group, this is a badge that has sold in the thousands and was created by a Gill Lynn. (31)
Finally, as we are holding a birthday party at the end of the term, we decided to give out party bags at the end of the evening with multiple rainbow themed sweets and goodies in there. One of the gifts was a Rainbow Olivia fun badge. This was on the one of her holding the balloons, which we thought fit great with the celebration theme. (17)
So, 81 badges are going to be arriving in the post at some point this week, and I am super excited to see them all and give them to the girls at the end of the term.
With so many badges, does anyone have any hints / tips on storing them? I currently have two wallets, one holding interest / challenge badges and the other holding Rainbow badges (eg. promise badges, unit tags, birthday badges). I am struggling to find a tub to hold them all in that had sections for them all.
My Rainbow Adventure 