Challenges and activities

You’ve told us how hard the last year’s been. We want to make sure that you feel supported to look after yourself, even when times are hard. Happiness is unique to everyone, there isn’t one single thing that makes everyone happy. It’s time to discover what your happiness looks like.

What could you and others do to look after yourself when times get tough? It can be really hard to think about these things when you’re feeling down, so creating a happiness plan before can really help as something to reflect on when you need it.

Download the Doodle activity sheet

Try out some of our ideas below to see if any of them are right for you:

• Doodling, colouring and drawing can let your mind focus on your wonderful creations. Check out our doodling sheet to have a go yourself! You could print it off or use a drawing app on your computer or tablet to complete the doodling challenges.
• Watch our How To Video: I’m worth it. Guided journaling can help us make sense of your thoughts. Research other questions you could answer to help you think through what you’re dealing with.
• Create a playlist of all your favourite get-up-and-dance songs, give it a title that makes you smile! Put it on and get lost in the music. You could even do a playlist swap with a friend.
• Share something that makes you happy with someone else and ask them what makes them happy. Try it out and see what you think.
• Smile at yourself every time you see your reflection. It’s simple but it can bring happiness to your day. If you’re smiling, it might make other people smile too!
• Think about your hobbies and plan something around them. For example, if you’re a cooking champ, why not plan a dinner party for your house? You don’t have to actually do it but it can be fun to plan a dream event.
• Act like a child. Put on a childhood classic TV show or eat your favourite childhood meal. Get lost in nostalgia.
• A tidy space can really help you feel happier. Tidy everything away and find homes for out of place items. If you’re allowed, rearrange your space to work better for you. Maybe you’ve never quite liked where your bookcase is. Check out our magazine activity . Ask an adult for help with moving and furniture.
• Make a list of all the movies you could watch. Close your eyes and that’s your entertainment for the night so grab your popcorn. Happy watching!

Now grab a notepad or something to write or doodle on. Jot down or draw everything that brings you joy, no matter how small. It could be something you tried out from our list above, or something as simple as seeing the sun shining outside.  You could do this as a mind map, putting the word happiness in the middle and drawing arms off it with each idea.

Once you have your happiness mind map, look at the questions below. These will help you make your happiness plan. Take your time and think about each answer. You might want to put it down and come back to it at a later date.

• What makes me happy is…
• I really enjoy doing…
• I can tell I’m not feeling great because/when I…
• I think [name] would cheer me up the best.
• If I want to make myself feel better I can…

Now you’ve got your happiness plan, think about if you’d like to keep this secret to you or share it with others. You could share it with friends, family or your leader to let them know how they can support you when you might need it.

It’s okay to feel sad or down, its an emotion we all feel sometimes. But if you’re worried or something doesn’t seem right, speak to a trusted adult like your family, leader or teacher for support.

Note to leader

This last year has been challenging for everyone. Girls tell us they’re feeling more lonely and worried. But they’re also doing the things that they can do take care of themselves and keep well. For example, keeping in touch with friends and family, playing games and enjoying the outdoors. This challenge is designed to help them understand what they can do to look after their wellbeing.

If you receive any disclosures or have a concern for welfare, follow the A Safe Space guidance. If there is an immediate risk of harm, call the police and out-of-hours Safeguarding team on 07508 032997.

We’re joining with our friends at Children in Need to support the amazing work they do, and we’re excited to have you all come along on the journey with us.

This year’s focus is ‘Act your age’, which means it’s really easy to get involved - simply choose an age and do something good with it.

You might decide to use your age, the total ages of everyone in your home, unit or even the age of something that’s really important you – like Girlguiding, we’re 110 years old this year!

It could be the distance you cover, the time you do something for, the number of things you do or your sponsorship target. We’re sure you will have lots of amazing ideas of things you could do. But to help, we’ve put some ideas to get you started below. Your challenge can be as big or small as you want, as long as it’s a challenge to you. Whatever it is, you’ll be helping to change the lives of young people across the UK.

Challenge ideas:

• Active challenge: Could you do a sponsored dance or aerobics-a-thon? If you’re target is 16, could you do this for 16 hours throughout the month? What about travelling a set distance every day, or challenging yourself to try out that many sports in the month?
• Habit challenge: Could you try out and commit to doing new habits every day for your age? For example, you could try reading before bed, helping with the washing up or smiling at yourself every time you see a mirror. Inspire others to try new habits for their wellbeing.
• Music challenge: Humming, tapping or rapping. Could you learn that many new songs to sing or play on an instrument? What about a sing-a-thon or perhaps you could make instruments out of household objects and put on a performance for your neighbours?
• Joke challenge: Haha, hehe! Can you learn your target amount of jokes and tell them to that many people? What about telling each person a different joke? Perhaps you could perfect your joking telling skills and put on your own street comedy night to raise money!
• Craft challenge: Could you make that many things, or that many different things? What about selling them to help meet your target? Perhaps you have a special skill or want to perfect a new one. Embroidery, upcycling, or DIY? Perhaps you could bake 110 cakes and cookies to celebrate Girlguiding?

Planned your idea? Got yourself ready? It’s time to spread the message far and wide.

We’ve made a fundraising totaliser to help you keep count of all the money you raise throughout your challenge. You can fill it in anyway that you like.

The money Girlguiding members fundraise will make a huge difference. Together, we can raise money to make amazing things happen. 

If you want more information about raising money in your local area, check out our Fundraising policy.

Lots of things might be different this year, but one thing’s always the same – many of us will be returning back with our guiding families this month to celebrate a new term of guiding fun! It doesn’t matter if you’re back with your fellow Rangers in person, seeing their faces virtually or sending them love from afar; you’re all a part of a big guiding family and we want everyone to celebrate our amazing community together this month.

Our promise is something that connects every member of Girlguiding across the world, no matter their language, culture or beliefs. It brings us all together, and is what makes guiding so special.

Explore

Let’s explore what our promise means to us this month. You can then either choose to make your Promise for the first time or remake it in a new, challenging way!

Our Ranger promise is: I promise that I will do my best, to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the King and my community, to help other people and to keep the Guide law.

As a member of Girlguiding, you are also a member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS). This is a world organisation, where there are Rangers like you all over the world, in around 150 countries with over 10 million members worldwide.

All countries accept the basic principles and values of guiding as expressed in the promise and law, which vary from country to country and all members of the global guiding community can wear the World badge, that means you too!

Use our activity sheet to help remember your promise. Colour and create your own designs in the words as you explore them. Use the second page to break down what the promise means to you, and actions you could take to live the Girlguiding values.

Make

What does this mean to you? Think about what you say in the promise and how you could do things this month to live your promise.  

For example, with 'serve the King and my community, or help other people' - what could you do this month to be kind and helpful to your friends, family or people in your community? Our friends at Amey do lots to help people, like building roads and making sure we have electricity in our homes. Check out what they’ve been doing during the COVID lockdown period to help and support people.

Celebrate

Whether it’s your first time, or remaking your Promise for the new year, it could be together as a unit virtually, sharing the experience with your family and friends at home or making the plans for when you’re back meeting face to face.

Already made your promise? Why not challenge yourself to make your promise in a different way – perhaps using Makaton, in a different language or whilst doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Share with us what you’ve been up to this month using #AdventuresAtHome to show the world how big and amazing our community is!

Summer is a time for lots of outside fun at camps, festivals or jamborees! You might have been planning on going to Wellies and Wristbands with your Ranger unit. We’re all having to do things a little differently this year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep the adventurous spirit alive at home.

Try out some of these fun outdoor (or indoor!) activities and have some amazing adventures:

Get out and about

• Set off on an adventure in your local area. Look at a map before heading out and make a route, or put on your shoes and just see where they take you! Make sure you let an adult know.
• We’ve created an activity sheet to help you make your local adventure map. Download the adventure map activity (PDF)
• Why not use your adventure map to enter our competition with GO Outdoors this August.

Try it this way

Unable to go outside? Why not have an adventure in your home, garden or even virtually! Choose a place you’d love to visit, and ask an adult to show you using online maps.

Get festive

• Get the Wellies and Wristbands vibe and transform your home or a local area into your own festival! Make a plan of what you want to do - perhaps you’ll stream some live performances of your favourite bands, make tie dye t-shirts or eat some tasty festival foods. Keep your eyes peeled as we’ll be sharing lots of Wellies related fun! Let us know what you’ve been up to with #WelliesAndWristbands.
• Set up camp in your garden and you could safely make a campfire, toast some marshmallows, tell campfire stories and sing songs. Check out our Girlguiding campfire songs to keep the festival going into the evening.

Get creative

Be inspired by all the amazing artistic things you could create in, with or for nature! Share your masterpieces on social media using the #AdventuresAtHome for all to see. 

Get interested

Inspired by all the fun things you’ve been doing outside this summer? Why not check out the Bushcraft or Festival goer interest badge?

This month, take the time to explore what’s important to you and the people around you. There might be something that you experience personally, or a difficulty your friends or family experience that you’d like to support.

There are lots of local and global movements that you could support. You might have heard recently of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is campaigning for Black people to be treated fairly. At Girlguiding we want to include everyone and want all communities to know we stand together. Use this challenge to raise your own voice, or look to a community that could use your support. 

Being an ally means supporting and standing up for people who are treated unfairly to help create a more equal society for all.It might be about their race, sexuality, religion or disability.

The important thing about being a good ally is knowing that the story you want to share is not yours, and it’s not about you. It’s about how you use your voice to help raise the voices of people experiencing inequality.

Being an ally is a lifelong journey. It means understanding your own privileges and how you can use these to support and stand up for groups who have less privilege, or are marginalised. There will be times when you will need other people to be an ally to you, and times when you can be an ally to others.

Challenge yourself to listen, learn, reflect and question things that are affecting people in the world.

Here are some ideas:

• Check in on your friends and family (including your Guiding family) to make sure everyone knows that you’re there for them.
• Explore issues that are affecting you or the people you care about. For example, we have lots of activities here about Black Lives Matter for you to explore.
• Fundraise to support charities and organisations that are supporting the movement.
• Write to your local MP about why an issue or movement is important to you and what they could do to show their support. We’ve made some top tips to help you.
• Have a go at our Equality v equity activity, which explores the difference between equality and equity.

We’d love to hear what you’ve been up to this month, you can share on our socials using #AdventuresAtHome.

Why not try? 

Our monthly activities are available to download and try at home.

This month we explore making your voice heard by writing to your MP.

Download the activity

Share your skies

Are you a day dreamer who likes to find the animal shapes in the clouds during the day, or a stargazer, who switches off from everything by looking at the stars in the night sky?

Have you ever looked up into the night sky and saw something amazing, but when you’ve tried to take a photo of it, it doesn’t look the same?

We challenge you to improve your astrophotography skills and discover all the incredible things that are happening in our night sky. Astrophotography is the practise of taking photos of astronomical objects like planets or star clusters, celestial events like solar eclipses or meteor showers, and areas of the night sky.

Choose a viewing spot for the month. Try to pick somewhere you could go to safely every day like your bedroom window, or just outside your front door. Then, when you’re ready just look up. What do you see? How many stars can you see? Can you spot any constellations that you know of?

Try to take a photo every day from that spot. Use our activity sheet, or check out our  video to find out all the best top tips for improving your astrophotography skills.

Spend the month trying out different techniques to see what improves your photos. Perhaps you’ll find your own amazing top tip which you could share with your fellow Rangers.

Try it this way

If you don’t have a camera, that’s no problem – jot down or draw what you see to create your own stargazing journal and notice how they change day by day. Why do you think this is?

At the end of the month, look at all your photos or drawings. What changes have you noticed in your astrophotography skills or what you’ve seen in the night sky?

Now, share your skies on social media using the hashtag #AdventuresAtHome to see what other Rangers around the UK and beyond can see from their viewing spots. Do you all see the same sky? Why do you think some places have clearer skies than others?
Share your photos and top tips with your Ranger unit. Keep practising your astrophotography skills. You could have a night sky photo competition at your next Ranger camp or festival.

Inspired to find out more about the night sky and space? We created this fun challenge with our friends at the Royal Astronomical Society. You can find lots of great things about stargazing with our extra information sheet, or about space and the night sky on their website.