When I was searching for Brownie badge ideas on Pinterest and in Girl Scout leaders Facebook groups, one kept coming up more and more: the Senses badge but for Halloween. So that's what my troop did at our October meeting.
To make this meeting even more special and fall-like (and because marshmallows were going to be in play), we met at someone's house. They had a fire pit in their yard, so we had a nice fire going and performed all steps around the fire.
Here's how we earned the badge:
1. Look Around
To use their sense of sight, I sent the girls on a scavenger hunt. I bought giant marshmallows, hid them throughout the yard, and told the girls to search for the "ghost poop".
2. Listen to the World
I purchased ghost paper pads at Walmart and gave one to each girl along with a pen. Then I played a spooky sounds soundtrack through Spotify and had the girls write down the sounds they heard.
3. Put Your Nose to Work
The girls had to use their sense of smell to identify different scents. I saved old medicine bottles and filled them with different things for the girls to smell: garlic aka Witch's Breath, cinnamon aka Magic Mummy Powder, coffee aka Graveyard Dirt, pickle juice aka Frog Sweat, and peppermint aka Ghost Toot.
The girls wrote down on their ghost paper pads what they thought each scent was.
4. Take a Taste Test
A great way to use up leftover Girl Scouts cookies is to bake them into a recipe. I baked Do-Si-Dos into a cookie recipe and had the girls eat the cookies to determine which Girl Scout cookie I used.
5. Touch and feel
This last step was my favorite. It's something my mom liked to do every year around Halloween for the kids she taught. You can do this in the dark and have each girl feel inside a bowl, or if you can't turn off the lights because you're meeting outside, turn it into a mystery box game. I secretly placed items inside an empty box, had the girls reach in, and then write down what they thought they were feeling.
We did cooked spaghetti aka zombie guts, pipe cleaners for spider legs, corn kernels as witch's teeth, licorice vines aka rat tails, dried apricots for monster ears, Jell-O for a zombie brain, olives as monster eyeballs, and fruit roll-ups for Frankenstein's flesh.
Yes, it's gross, but it's also really fun. Just make sure you have hand wipes handy.
After completing all the steps, we roasted marshmallows and enjoyed the rest of the fire.
Did your troop complete this badge? Let me know how it went!
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