Note: These activities are from a resource that our council used as part of New Leader training. I shared these with other leaders as I served as area Trainer and they have been a valuable resource to many over the years. Since our council no longer shares these ideas, I wanted to make them available to new leaders in a digital format. These ideas are not restricted to only Girl Scouts, they can be used in many youth development settings. Enjoy!
Keep working on Thinking Day activities. Have an imaginary trip around the world and play songs or games or have food from different parts of the world. Make Thinking Day paper chains and count down to Thinking Day. On each chain, write a good deed or nice thing that the girls can do for someone that day.
Celebrate Lunar New Year. Do some origami or calligraphy. Sample foods, learn about customs, try eating with chopsticks, etc.
Have a "loud singing" contest - especially good for a rainy day when everybody feels cooped up.
Spend time going over personal safety - calling 911, fires, strangers, how not to get lost, what to do if you get lost, etc. There are a few patch programs that help with teaching these topics and keeping information age appropriate.
Play Safe is a good program from BIC and Girl Scouts of the Nations Capital has an
Emergency Preparedness patch program.
Celebrate Valentine's Day. There are lots of crafts, foods, etc to try. Have the girls bring Valentines for each other, or have them write positive notes about each girl in the troop to exchange. Or have a Valentines cookie, sticker or swap exchange.
Discuss the fact that the founder, Juliette Gordon Lowe, was deaf. Learn the alphabet in sign language. Learn how to say your name. See if you have a person visit who knows sign language. Perhaps they could teach a favorite Girl Scout song or the Girl Scout Promise in sign.
In February, the French people have a
Lemon Festival in the town of Menton. A parade of lemon-filled wagons in the lemon parade travels through streets lined with lemon, orange, grapefruit, and tangerine decorations. Make a lemon meringue pie, lemon bars, or fresh lemonade.
Have a father-daughter dessert night, or perhaps a decorated cake contest. Contestants can bake the cakes in advance or see if a local bakery will donate plain cakes or cupcakes. If your troop decides to host this event as a fund-raiser, the girls could work together to pre-bake the cakes for the event.
Hold a coat, mitten, or blanket drive in your community to benefit a homeless shelter.
Learn how to jump rope. Play double dutch.
Plan a Mother-Daughter (or She & Me) Tea. Role-play introductions and practice table-setting. Play a table-setting relay race. At the Tea, have mothers and daughters bring baby pictures. Pass the pictures around and let everyone guess the identities. Let the girls act as hostess to their mothers. Play a game like Bingo.
Attending a Thinking Day event is a must! This is a great chance for the girls to participate and know that they are part of a larger organization than just your own troop.
Celebrate Lincoln's birthday with building log cabins or making old-fashioned vegetable or stone soup. Celebrate Washington's birthday - anything with cherries seems to work. Or, get a copy of the children's book "George Washington's Breakfast" and make the food from the book. Or, talk about presidents in general. How many have there been? What are the requirements for becoming president? Make silhouettes of the girls heads by shining a light past their profile and tracing onto a piece of black construction paper. Mount on a circular piece of paper. How do the girls think
they would look as a coin?
In February, the Vietnamese people celebrate
Tet, a seven day festival. A symbolic farewell is bid to "kitchen gods" who are supposed to ascend to heaven to report on members of the family. Firecrackers are set off to mark the departure of the kitchen gods. There is a ceremony to welcome the return of ancestral spirits at midnight, then bid farewell three days later. A leafy branch covered with fruit and flowers symbolizes a prosperous year to come. Perhaps you could find some way to celebrate this festival, especially if you know someone who is Vietnamese.
Much of the world celebrates Shrove Tuesday or Carnival or Fat Tuesday. This is the last day before Lent for Christians, a period of forty days of quiet and self-examination, as well as fasting. In South America, there are parades, tricks and revelry, masks and games, and feasting. In Denmark, there are
Shrovetide buns. In England, there is a
Pancake Day. In the Netherlands, they eat bread filled with sausage. To celebrate, make plaster masks with your troop.
plaster gauze wrap. Put cotton balls over eyes and straws in mouth to breathe. Have the girls work in partners. Or cut the masks out of
fun foam and decorate with feathers, sequins, etc.
Put cold cream on girls' faces and cover with "Faster Plaster" or any
Have a Teddy Bear's picnic. Let all the girls bring their favorite bear, dress up, and have a tea party. It might be fun to have a troop bear who could visit the homes of the girls in turn, with a journal to tell about her adventures. After she's been to all of the homes in the troop, perhaps you could send her on adventures with other troops, take her on special troop field trips, and let her participate in camp. Another idea is to trade bears (often called mascots) with other troops all around the world.
Teach some simple first aid skills such as what to do for a nosebleed or a knocked out tooth. There are many patch programs that cover a wide range of ages, and there is a First Aid badge at every Girl Scout age level.
Sew dunk bags. These could be made of open weave dish rags or heave duty lace curtains, or any kind of heavy netting material (not tulle) you can find. We have recycled produce packages (onions often come in these net bags). Sew two pieces of fabric together around three sides. Sew a casing around the top and insert a drawstring (if using produce bags, enclose the edges with heavy packing tape to make a solid surface that can be sewn). Practice proper dish washing techniques for camping. Here is a
pdf from Girl Scouts of San Diego that shows a step by step process.
Play the Feelings Game. Start the discussion by relating an incident where someone's feelings were hurt because of something that was said. Ask the girls to name some feelings. As they name them, write them down on strips of paper (e.g. happy, sad, scared, proud, mad). Have the girls take turns taking a strip and acting it out without words or sounds. Discuss how you can tell how a person feels by looking at her.
Assemble autograph books. Let the girls gather autographs from other troop members. Instruct the girls that they need to write a note to each girl with at least three things they admire about that person.
Make jewelry. String beads, make bread dough beads, use friendly plastic, shrink art, knotted friendship bracelets, or make your own beads out of recycled magazines. There are many bead and craft shops that can help you come up with appropriate projects or even check out jewelry making kits at craft stores. These activities can help you earn the
Jeweler Junior Badge.
Have a winter relay race - each group has a set of boots, jacket, hat, gloves, scarf. First in line puts on all items, runs to the designated spot and back, takes off items and gives to the next girl in line.
Have a pet sharing day. Ask the girls to bring their pet to the meeting (if appropriate). Discuss proper care and feeding of a pet. Or, visit a pet shelter and volunteer or take items like used towels and blankets for bedding (our Junior troop earned their Bronze award by volunteering at a local animal shelter and working with a dog trainer. Each girl trained one of the rescue dogs and then we entered them in the dog show at our county fair. Every dog that the girls showed was adopted that day!) You could also have a vet visit and teach the girls about simple pet first aid.
Make pet rocks. Have the girls find rocks and decorate them with wiggle eyes, felt, fur, or hair. Cut out feet from fun foam.
I hope you have found some great ideas from this resource. I have added links where I felt they would be useful but I have kept the ideas as presented in the training materials I received as a new leader (nearly 20 year ago!).
Graphics used in this blog post have been purchased from EduClips. The ideas shared in this post have come from a handout shared by the Ozark Area Girl Scout Council (that has become the Girl Scouts of the Missouri Heartland). This resource is no longer shared by council trainers, however I have continued to use it over the years and felt that others might also benefit from the information provided.
