Badge Testing Night #2, My Space and Special Thoughts Interest Badges

With just a few meetings left in the year we wanted to get another badge testing night in for the girls. It's taken me several years to get a system put together for Individual Interest Badge Testing that I like, but after much trial and error I'm please with this new way. This is our 2nd Badge testing night and I've already handed out over 20 badges earned by the girls at home. I do my best to keep some of all the badges on hand so they get them the same night. We also do a little badge presentation of some stellar badge work that the girls have brought in to inspire others with some ideas of what they could try out at home.

This week while the girls we're being pulled for badge testing we offered a craft, 2 interest badges the girls could work on and eventually a group song/game. Its often tricky to find activities we can do with the whole group while girls get pulled away for their badge testing. We need interesting activities that can keep the girls engaged, but one that you can leave and come back to. 

The girls worked on creating their very own Special thoughts journals. In these books I had put badge earning pages for the My Space and Special Thoughts badges. The idea was that after they had made their journals they could work on these badges and hopefully earn something that night, even if they hadn't prepared something before coming to the meeting. Having their special journal was also handy because it gave them a book in which to "Keep a word or picture journal for two weeks. Write or draw what happens and how you feel about it." which was a badge requirement for the Special Thoughts badge. We figured with the holiday break coming up the girls could work on their journals and bring it back to receive their badges when we got back.

We had some amazing badge earning done during this meeting. I got to hear all about a robotics competition that one of our Brownies Kaylan is involved in. She brought in some videos of her team and the robot they use for their competition.

Antonia built her own musical instrument, creating a guitar out of recycled materials. She evern wrote and performed some songs for us. 

Lastly Jazmin brought in some of her artwork and Rainbow Loom creations which have been her hobbies for many months. She was able to show us some amazing creations and the girls were all really engaged. 

After these girls shared some of their badge work we joined together to play a rhythm/passing game called Obwisana. The game is originally from Ghana and is a great challenge for this age group. After learning the words and tune each girl was given a glass rock. As the tune is sung the girls all pass their rocks around the circle in rhythm. This is actually harder said then done! After we tried the easy version of just passing the rocks we gave each girl two rocks and added in a pass, tap the rocks together and pass motion. Very Challenging! You can see us trying our the game below!

*Edit I included the video of when we did this game again at our Holiday Party (Hence why there are parent guests there). My original film had clear shots of one of my girls who does not have an image release formed signed. This is the same passing game, just the second time they played it.