General Activities
Friendship Activities
Outdoor Activities
Bridging Activitites
Service Project Ideas
General Activities
Skits:
Try to use skits as often as possible, to complement your program. Skits are a good way to incorporate Circle groups into your weekly activity, and gives the girls a chance to showcase their creativity, teamwork, presentation skills, etc (and there are SO much fun to watch!). We have used skits to show safety awareness (eg. what would you do if you got lost at the mall?), practical first aid, wildlife preservation (eg. pick an endangered species and write a skit about why it's in trouble and what we can do to help), as well as at camp with theme-related topics such as having the girls create legends about the stars/planets at Space Camp.
Newspaper Fashion Show:
Discuss how clothes are designed and how patterns are used. Give each group a stack of newspapers and some masking tape, and have them design newspaper outfits for each other (not just dresses but hats, shoes, bags, etc). Let them know that not everyone has to be a 'model'; some can just be designers, creating some of the outfits and preparing the models to go on-stage. Use masking tape to mark out a run-way on the floor, and when the outfits are all ready, put on some music and have the girls show off their designs.
Get Active Bingo:
Make a bingo sheet, where each square is a simple healthy activity, and send each girl home with one. That week, have them cross off any squares that they complete, and have them bring it back the next week, and compare: Who got a full line? Who filled the whole sheet?
Friendship Activities
Friendship Finds:
At the beginning of the meeting tell girls that you want them to be �Friendship Detectives� today. Explain that you would like each of them to be on the lookout for how their fellow Brownies demonstrate acts of kindness and friendship throughout the meeting. You may want to review what actions show a good friend (Ask the girls for their ideas, record on a blackboard, whiteboard, or flipchart, and then supplement any important points they have missed--sharing, using manners, letting someone else go first, helping, etc.).
At the end of the meeting ask a few of the girls (they will all have their hands up) to report their �Friendship Finds.� This could be made into a regular activity that is done at the end of every meeting. If you have a meeting place that you are allowed to post thing in, you could make a display of �Friendship Finds.� One idea might be to have a picture of a detective with a magnifying glass following a trail of footprints. You will make the trail of footprints longer and longer with each �Friendship Find� that is reported, by writing the �reports� on footprints. Add new footprints each week.
Friends Wanted Poster:
Discuss what people look for in a friend. Have girls design an 'friend wanted' poster stating what they want in a friend OR design a poster advertising themselves as a friend. As a group, make list of ten most important characteristics of a friend.
Outdoor Activities Whenever time, weather, etc, permit it, try to take your girls outside. Even a short walk to a nearby park, beach, etc, can be a lot of fun, especially if you have some fun activities do while there. Here are a few goodies:
Scavenger Hunt:
This tried-and-true favourite works pretty much everywhere--indoors, outdoors, beach, camp, etc--and has lots of room for variation. You don't want to make the list too long, or they'll get bored, but there are lots of choices for the list itself. You can go with some basics, like 3 types of flower, 4 different birds, etc, or more open-ended, like "find something shiny", or "find something smaller than your thumb". Remind girls to make note of the item but to leave it where they found it--we shouldn't take anything away with us!
Un-Nature Trail:
Select a short piece of trail (~30-50 feet) and hide a bunch of unnatural objects along the trail (~1 per girl). Let girls wander along trail and try to find the items. After all items have been found, discuss why certain items were easier to find than others.
Observation Kits:
In a bag, place a variety of items to encourage the girls to be observant while on a hike or playing outside. Eg. toilet paper rolls (to direct vision), dental mirror (for looking under things), paint chips (girls try to find things to match those colours), cards with descriptive words written on them (eg. soft, hard, rough, smooth, fuzzy--then girls find things that match words).
It�s a Small World (Canadian Guider, Spring �99):
Give each group a string approximately two meters (seven feet) long, to tie into a circle. Place the �circle� on the ground somewhere outside. Explore what is inside the circle. Are there any critters living there? A magnifying glass is useful for this activity. Encourage the girls to look over, under and around this space. Is the earth moist? Is this a sunny or shady spot? Do plants grow well? Another way to do this activity is to have each girl trace and cut out an outline of her feet. Put it on the ground. Look carefully to see how many different things would be under her feet.
Wool Hunt:
Divide into two groups. Assign each group a separate playing area�it must be a very small area (e.g. 6ft. in diameter) and a good distance away from the other group�s area. Then, each group is given 12 pieces of wool about 10cm long and all different colours. The groups both hide their pieces of wool in their assigned area. Once finished, everyone meets back at a central location. A leader goes to show each group the other group�s area, and then it is a race to see which group can find all 12 piece of wool first.
Bridging�Making New Friends Across Distance and Ages:
Brownie Revels:
A Brownie Revel is when two or more Brownie units get together for a special event. It could just be a themed Day Camp or a hike. It could be a special Area sleepover for all the Brownie units in the area. Give your Brownies a chance to see just how many other Brownies there are in their community or region�and how much fun it can be to get together!
Pen Pals:
This takes a bit of leg-work on the part of the Owls to find some pen pals, but it can be a great experience. Your penpals can be as close as a few districts away, across the province or in another country! Try asking around, especially at trainings, conferences, etc, that you attend. Or, if you have any Guiding contacts overseas or are internet-saavy (many overseas Guiding organizations are on the web), try to make some contacts and find another group of Brownies to be penpals with that way.
Before you start corresponding, you'll need to do some brainstorming about what they might want to ask their penpals, and what they could tell their penpals about themselves. You'll probably want to go over the conventions of letter-writing, since your Brownies may or may not know what writing a letter involves. Penpals can be done either on an individual girl-girl matching basis or just writing from one whole group to the other. (I still regularly correspond with�and have visited with on many occasions--the Brownie penpal I was matched with 18 years ago when I began Brownies!)
As well as your letters themselves, you can include drawings, photographs, small craft samples, or even a video tape message. If your penpal group is not too far away, you could try to plan an outing together, such as a hike, or a sleepover.
Ideas for Bridging with other Branches:
Sparks:
-invite them to your Halloween party or plan a fun and wacky meeting
-visit their meeting or invite them to yours to teach them songs and/or games that your unit loves.
Guides:
-ask them if they'll come and teach you camp skills, like knots, campfire-building, putting up tents, etc.
-invite them to teach you songs or games
-planning a fun 'field trip', or a hike? Maybe the Guides unit would like to come with you (even if only a few Guides can come, your girls will still love it!)
Pathfinders and Senior Branches:
-Invite them to visit your unit when you're planning something that requires lots of 'adult' hands, like a complicated craft, etc; you want to make sure the older girls feel useful. They also make great helpers on hikes or other outings.
-Sometimes the older girls would like to plan a special event for younger branches (when I was in Rangers, we planned a skating party, with games, refreshments, etc, for the Brownie and Sparks units)
-Invite a few girls to come to camp with you, and give them the opportunity to plan/deliver some of the program; maybe they'd like to organize a couple of crafts, or teach a few wide games, or lead campfire.
-Keep in touch with leaders of Pathfinders and Senior Branches; have any of their girls taken Guiding trips that they could come and talk to your unit about? Are they working on any special projects right now that they'd like to tell you about?
Trefoil Guild:
-Have a tea party and invite a few Trefoil Guild members to be your guests of honour
-Talk to your TG members--what are their strengths? Is there something they'd like to come and talk about/help with?
Walk-athons, Skip-athons or Running for a Cause:
-Participate as a unit (wear uniforms!) in local runs/walks for various causes: Run for the Cure, Terry Fox Run. Try to find a cause of some personal importance to one of the Owls, or one of the girls (like the local children's hospital, or the Child Run, for kids with cancer.)
-Participate in walk-athons or skip-athons as a unit (wear uniforms!): eg. Jump Rope For Heart program
Food bank: Instead of dues one week, bring a can for the food bank
Tray Favours: make small crafts for tray favours for a meals-on-wheels program or seniors center
Litter Chase:
Take garbage bags and plastic gloves to a local park or beach and pick up trash. Talk to girls beforehand about what is and isn't safe to pick up.
Storm Drain Painting:
Contact local environmental group (eg. RiverWorks, the Stream Team) and arrange to paint yellow fish on storm drains (to warn people not to dump toxins into drains).
Gardening:
Grow plants and deliver them to a seniors center, hospital, etc. Or, you can see if a seniors' home, etc, would like to have your Brownie unit come and plant spring flowers in their flower beds (this can be a good bridging activitiy)
Singing:
Now that you've learned so many lovely songs, why not share them? Again, hospitals and senior's centers are good places to try; they're often delighted to have visitors.