My troop earned the Brownie Making Friends badge at the start of the new school year. I thought it would be a fun way to get to know each other after a summer apart. (This could also be a good badge to do if you have new girls joining your troop or are starting a brand new Brownie troop.)
Here's how we earned the badge and the order in which we completed the steps:
1. Make Friendly Introductions
For this meeting, we met at our local farm and had a mini ice cream party sitting outside at a picnic table. To earn the first step of this badge, we went around the picnic table saying our names and one fun fact about us. Then I taught them the "Brownie Smile" song.
4. Learn How to Disagree
I gave each girl a popsicle stick (the large craft ones) and had them write their names on one side and three things they liked on the other side. Those three things were: a favorite food, a favorite color, and a favorite sport. We went around the picnic table comparing answers to show that some of us have similar interests, while some of us do not like the same foods or colors. We can still be friends even when we have different hobbies or opinions. The important thing is to be a good friend while you disagree.
(Side note: I used the popsicle sticks to help me choose helpers at our future meetings.)
3. Share Favorite Activities
For this step, we talked about how being a good friend means you pay attention to what's important to your friends. When playing together, you might agree to play something that your friend likes, and then you can share a favorite activity with your friend - or try something new to both of you!
The girls then told me their favorite songs, and I made a playlist so we could listen to music while eating our ice cream (which happened at the end of our meeting). And because we were talking about activities, I had the girls write down three activities they'd like to do as a troop that year.
2. Show Friends You Care
Because it's important to do nice things for people, we put together Birthday Boxes to donate to a local food pantry. These Birthday Boxes, if you don't know, contain everything someone would need to bake a cake - no eggs or dairy required. You can find a recipe for Birthday Boxes here.
(This also makes a good community service project to do around Juliette Gordon Low's birthday, which is on October 31.)
5. Practice Friendship
To close out the meeting, the girls made a list of the top 3 things they could do to be good friends. I challenged them to pick one of those things to try that week.
Has your troop earned the Brownie Making Friends badge? What activities did you do?
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