Challenges and activities
Check out our themed challenges and extra activities to explore at home
Our challenges are for girls to explore and investigate however they want.
You don't have to do them in your unit meetings, but you might want to talk about how you are all getting on.
These challenges are not part of the Girlguiding programme, but they are inspired by our interest badges and we hope they inspire girls to try new things.
Escape the indoors
What’s one of the best things about this time of year? The sun’s shining (hopefully) and it’s easier to spend more time outside. But how do you get outside? Outside can be anything, it can be your local park, your garden, a balcony or even a massive window that lets you look outside.
Close your eyes and think about what your favourite things to do outside are. Maybe you like to play with friends, splash in water, read a book or even do a bit of gardening.
We want to challenge you to try something new outside. Think about what you like to do outside, now think about something that’s the opposite. Your challenge is to do that instead. So, if you enjoy being active and running around, why not try a relaxing outdoor activity? Or if you like chilling in your outside space, how about going on an adventure instead?
At Girlguiding we love the outdoors and we’ve put together some ideas of things you could do in your outdoor space. Check it out and pick one (or more) to try!
- Where do you normally eat your breakfast? We bet it’s inside! Why not take it outdoors and have a breakfast picnic with all your family? Give everyone a different task to do to help create the picnic.
- Did you know you could do all your Brownie interest badges outdoors if you wanted? The Grow your own and Aviation badges work really well outdoors but you could challenge yourself to do your Painting or Inventing badge outdoors.
- Want to be creative outdoors? Try out our Create in the outdoors activity sheet to create some amazing outdoor art. If you can’t print it off, grab a blank piece of paper, draw your own animal and cut it out. Don’t forget to ask an adult to share your masterpiece using #AdventuresAtHome.
- Don’t have much outdoor space? That’s fine, think about how you could bring the outdoors indoors. Plant some seeds and watch them grow or create a garden indoors using drawings.
- Girlguiding is taking part in Generation Green to help young people connect with nature. Take a look to see how you can take part.
- Can’t get outdoors? Ask an adult to help you find a virtual nature walk or use a maps app to visit famous outdoor places like the Grand Canyon or Big Ben. Where will the outdoors take you?
- Does your unit love adventure? Why not check out our new Adventure for girls pages. This will help you and your leader see everything that’s on offer for you. It’s got everything from axe throwing to zorbing!
Ready for a summer adventure with your family? Want to get away for a fun filled break? Join us for a great escape at our Girlguiding Activity Centres - Blackland Farm (Sussex), Foxlease (New Forest), Waddow Hall (Lancashire) - and experience a great selection of adventurous activities while you’re there. Check out what’s on offer.
Past challenges
What makes you happy? Is it spending time with your family or reading your favourite book? What about eating your favourite snack or playing fun games in your room? You’ve told us how hard this year has been for everyone. We want to make sure you’re looking after yourself, especially when things get a little tough.
Your challenge is to create a happiness map – this will be something you can use to think about what you enjoy doing and reflect on the things you could do to check in with yourself.
Download Road to happiness activity sheet
So, let’s get started! Grab your favourite notepad or something to write or draw things down on. Write the word happy in the middle. Around your happy, draw or write things that make you happy. Then using this think about your answers to the questions below. Need some help thinking of everything, check out our How to video: Brownie beads.
- What makes me happy is….
- Something someone else does that makes me happy is…
- I really enjoy doing….
- I think [name] would cheer me up the best
Now this is the most important thing to think about.
- If I want to make myself feel better I can…
There are lots of different things you could do to feel happy. Remember, what makes you happy might be different to someone else – we’re all unique! If you need some help with thinking of things you could do, look at our list below of things to try.
- Doodling, colouring and drawing can let your mind focus on the wonderful creations on your page. 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
- Hold a one-person dance party. Play your favourite song and dance like no one’s watching
- Ask someone else what makes them happy and try it out. You might find out that it makes you happy too
- Hold a laughter challenge. Did you know that if you pretend to laugh you’ll probably end up really laughing? Try it out, perhaps on your own or with a friend. Will you get the giggles?
- Smile at yourself the mirror, how does it make you feel to see your smile?
- Help cook a healthy meal for you and your household. Maybe you could even hold your own cooking competition
- A tidy space can really help you feel calmer. Can you hold a tidy-a-thon and tidy up your room or sort through your stuff to see if there is anything you can donate?
- Read your favourite book and swap it with someone else for their favourite book
Challenge other Brownies to complete their happiness map. You could then share them and find a way to spread happiness to everyone at once.
Remember if you feel sad, that’s okay, its an emotion we all feel sometimes. You can talk to a trusted adult like your family, leader or teacher about it. They can help you! Make sure to speak to a trusted adult if you think something that’s making you sad isn’t right.
Note to leader
This last year has been challenging for everyone. Girls tell us that they are feeling more lonely, more worried and more fed up. But they are also doing the things 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.
Past challenges
Storytime stars
What's that in the sky? A bird, a plane or a sea of stars? Have you noticed the things you see in the sky at different times of the day?
We challenge you to discover what you can see at night time from your home. Whether that’s from your bedroom window or just outside your front door - it’s time to look up and appreciate our night sky. Have you ever stargazed? Have you looked up at the sky and seen the stars, or maybe even daydreamed whilst looking at them?
Each day, keep a space journal of what you see. Jot down what you were thinking or doodle what you could see that night. You might want to think about how many stars you saw, or if they were the same place as they were yesterday. Could you see more or less each day? You might see different things in the sky depending on where you live, and what the weather is that day. Why do you think this is?
When you’ve completed your space journal, print out our fun activity sheet to bring the stars into your home. Cut out the holes and shine a light (you could use a torch) at the paper to see a constellation of stars appear on your wall. A constellation is a group of stars that appears to form a pattern or picture You could even try making your own constellation activity sheet!
Hold your own evening of stargazing story fun for your household. Read out your space journal or choose a story that’s all about the night sky. Why not share your space journals with your Brownie friends too and see what space adventures you all went on together this month?
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.
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.
It’s Pudsey’s 40th birthday – wow! 40 years of helping improve the lives of children. This year, he’s asking us to join him in acting our age too. It’s really easy to get involved, simply choose an age and do something good with it.
You might decide to use your age, Pudsey’s age, the total ages of everyone in your home, unit or even choose the age of something that’s really important you – like Girlguiding, we’re 110 years old this year!
Your age 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 and get you started, we’ve come up with some ideas 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: Swim 40 length’s for Pudsey’s 40th birthday? Or make up an exercise routine? For example, if you’re eight, why not try for eight days – eight star jumps, eight rolly pollys, eight seconds running on the spot, touch your toes eight times, eight disco fever dance moves, eight stretches, eight hops and spin around eight times. Want to make it harder? Why not do that eight times each day!
- Joke challenge: Haha, hehe! Can you learn that amount of jokes and tell your target amount of people them? You could tell each person a different joke, and if you perfect your joking telling skills, you could put on your own street comedy night to raise money!
- Baking challenge: Bake 110 cakes and cookies to celebrate Girlguiding’s big birthday?
- Book challenge: Can you read that many books this month? Perhaps you could write that many sentences every day and create your own book by the end of the month. Where could your stories take you?
- Good turns challenge: Challenge yourself and others to do a set amount of good turns each day and help people in your local community. Perhaps your neighbours need help in their garden - could you help out the amount of hours as your age?
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, ask and adult to 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 Brownie friends 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. Your guiding family is all around the world and members of a global group called the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS).
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 Brownie 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 Brownie Guide law.
Use our activity sheet to help learn your promise. Colour in the words as you remember them, and use the back page to plan your dream promise party!
Make
What does the promise 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-19 lockdown period to help and support people.
Celebrate
Whether it’s your first time or you’re 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.
Ask an adult to 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. But 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 – make sure you take an adult with you. Look at a map before heading out and make a route with an adult, or put on your shoes and see where they take you. 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 camping
- Set up camp in your home or garden, this could be a tent, den or a blanket fort – anything you like. Look at what you have around your home or garden and make the best mini campsite.
- If you have space, safely make a campfire with adult supervision and toast some marshmallows, tell campfire stories and sing songs. Check out our Girlguiding campfire songs video. Keep singing until everyone can hear how much fun you’re having!
Get creative
- Be inspired by all the amazing artistic things you could create in and with nature. Make sculptures using mud, draw pictures in the sand or collect up natural materials in the woods to make an amazing picture or display. Ask an adult to 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 Archaeology interest badge?
Some people get treated unfairly based on who they are or what they look like.
You might have heard recently about Black Lives Matter, this is a campaign for Black people to be treated fairly. You might be affected by this or something similar yourself, or want to help other people.
A way to help people be treated fairly is to be an ally. An ally is a kind and supportive friend who sticks up for somebody who’s being treated unfairly. They listen really well and want to find out about how others feel.
At Girlguiding we want to include everyone and want all communities to know we stand together. If you’re affected by any issues, you could share this with family and friends so they know how to support you better.
There are lots of things you could do to listen, learn, reflect, question and discover how you could be an ally to someone.
Here are some ideas:
- Ask your friends and family (including your Guiding family) how they are.
- Send notes of positivity to friends and family to show you care.
- Fundraise to support charities and organisations that are supporting the cause you want to help.
- Use your voice to tell others about the things that you care about. Why not write to your local MP to make sure your voice is heard! MPs are people in power who can help make change. We’ve made some top tips to help you.
- Have a go at our Fairest of them all activity which looks at how we can be inclusive to everyone.
- Ask an adult to help find child-friendly resources about the things you and your friends care about. For example, we have lots of information here about Black Lives Matter for you to explore.
We’d love to hear what you’ve been up to this month, you can ask an adult to share on their social media 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.