Promise activities Brownies

Promise activities Brownies

Promise tree Duration: 15 minutes What you need: a large outline drawing of a tree with lots of branches, paper, felt-tip pens or colouring pencils, glue or sticky tape 1. Ask the girls to draw or write about a Good Turn that they have done that day or week. 2. As they take it in turns to attach their picture or writing to the tree, they can tell the rest of the unit about their Good Turn. Helpful hands What you need: paper, pens 1. Ask the girls to draw around their hands and cut out the shape. 2. On the palm of the hand write Helping God. 3. On each of the fingers the girls write one way they can help God using their hands. (You might need to discuss the kind of things they could write, such as small actions that are kind and helpful.) 4. Ask the girls to take the hands home and colour in the finger when they have carried out the action written there. Remember to discuss how the girls got on at the next meeting. Country code true or false? Write out a mixture of true and false statements about the Country Code such as: Dogs are allowed to run wild in fields with sheep. Pick up all your rubbish and put it in a bin. Then, in Sixes, challenge the girls to decide whether the statement is true or false. Share the answers, discuss what they mean and how following the Country Code is one way of keeping your Brownie Promise. 2

Country code pairs Duration: 15 minutes What you need: paper, coloured card, felt-tip pens or colouring pencils, glue, scissors 1. Ask the girls to write the clauses of the Country Code on pieces of paper. You will need two copies of the clauses for each Six. 2. Colour and mount them onto card to make playing cards that are all the same size. 3. They can then play pairs in their Sixes. Shuffle all the cards and lay them face down on the table. 4. Girls take turns to turn over two cards. If they match she can keep them; if not, she must replace them and the next girl has a go. Confidence tricks Duration: 30 minutes Girls need self-esteem (confidence in themselves and their abilities) to be able to direct the activities of their unit and local guiding. 1. Ask girls to think of assumptions people might hold about them and why for example, why others may see them in a bad light. For younger girls, this could be the assumption that children are badly behaved or noisy. Older girls could consider how the media portrays them and how the community might see them. 2. Write these assumptions on sticky notes and place them around a mirror. Then ask the girls to look at themselves. Do they feel these statements reflect them? Girls like you are lazy, drop litter, never help... Do they think this is true? 3. Your role is to steer the girls towards objecting to people viewing them this way. 4. Then ask the girls to say what they are like! Let them shout out positive statements about themselves and girls their age. 5. Write those statements on sticky notes and replace each of the negative things around the mirror with positive ones. Do they feel this reflects them in a more accurate way? 3

Helping hands hunt Duration: ten minutes What you need: card, colouring pens Thinking of ways they can help others can be hard for girls, especially the younger ones. Here s a way to get them thinking; 1. Hide cards, each with a single letter written on it, around your meeting place (indoors or outside) that spell out words or a sentence for example, CHRISTMAS, HELPING or WHAT I CAN DO TO HELP OTHERS. Try to make sure there is one card for each girl or pair of girls. 2. The girls or pairs must find a card each and then the whole unit works together to spell out the words or sentence. For younger girls, you could colour-code each word or even number the cards. 3. Once the words have been spelled out, the girls have to think of ways in which they could help others using whichever letter they found. For example, if they found the letter P they could suggest posting cards for someone or putting up decorations. 4. Encourage discussion about the answers. If, for example, a suggestion for T is tidy my bedroom, this could be expanded to a discussion about how this would help someone. Take action against poverty and hunger! Duration: 15 minutes What you need: food tins Help girls to do something to demonstrate that they can make a difference to people living in poverty and hunger. 1. Ask them to contribute one or two tins of soup, beans, vegetables, etc each. 2. Build a tower of tins as a demonstration of just how much everyone can do about poverty and hunger without leaving their area. 3. Distribute the tins to local soup kitchens and homeless shelters. (Don t forget to liaise with them in advance!) Environmental damage caused by the changing climate and by human activity is playing a significant role in worsening the global food crisis. Recycling can make such a difference, so as it s just after Christmas ask everyone to bring old Christmas cards along to the event. Send the cards to a charity that will benefit, eg to The Woodland Trust, which runs a Christmas card recycling scheme every year. Emphasise that there are plenty of small things girls can do to help apart from giving money. 4

My Promise torch Duration: 45 minutes What you need: one piece of silver card per person, sticky tape, lots of orange card, scissors, glue The Olympic torch is a symbol of peace, unity and friendship. Ask girls to make a similar Promise torch symbolising what guiding stands for. 1. Roll a piece of silver card into a cone shape and fasten with sticky tape. 2. Cut out large flame shapes from the orange card, ensuring everyone has enough pieces for each section of her Promise. Brownies should have six flames each. 3. When sticking a flame on the torch ask girls to discuss the part of the Promise it stands for, for example: I promise (talk about what a promise is and what it means to make one); That I will do my best (how do girls do their best in their daily lives). 4. When the torches are done, perform a circuit of the meeting place with everyone holding them up. They could say the Promise together while doing it. Best of British Duration: 30 minutes What you need: paper, colouring pens and pencils, information about and pictures of the UK (optional), computer (optional) Ask girls to create a tourist guide for brand-new visitors to the UK. Girls could make a brochure, poster, PowerPoint presentation or even act out a tour guide routine. Possible things to include could be customs and culture of the UK, places to visit, things to do, or food to try. CULTURE Fast friends What you need: balloons (one for each girl), permanent marker pens, string Strengthen friendships within Brownie Sixes with this activity. 1. Sitting in a circle, each girl blows up a balloon, ties it off and writes her name on it. 2. The balloons are then passed to the right. 5

3. Each girl writes a positive thing on the balloon about the person whose name is on it and then passes it to the right again. 4. Once the balloons have gone all the way around, each girl should have a balloon covered with positive messages. 5. Tie string to each balloon for girls to take home. Webbing Ask your Brownies to sit in a circle. Then you should stand in the circle near the edge with a ball of string. Conduct a conversation along the following lines: Leader: Who can name a plant that grows in this area? Girl: Dandelion. Give that girl the end of the string. Leader: Is there any animal that might eat the dandelion? Girl: A rabbit. Unravel the string so this girl can hold it too. Continue the conversation, connecting more girls with string. Bring in new elements and considerations such as other animals, soil and water until the entire circle of girls is strung together in a web which symbolises the web of life. The web that is created shows how all these things are inextricably connected and linked together. 6