Brownie Girl Scouts Through the Years (Brownie Try-it)

Please add ways to customize the Brownie Girl Scouts Through the Years Try-it activities here, and include useful resources below. This Try-it was retired in 2011, but scouts can still complete it, if they have the requirements.

As with all Brownie Try-its, scouts need to complete 4 activities to earn the badge.

Brownie Girl Scouting got started in the late 1920s. many of the appliances we take for granted today had not yet been invented. Few people flew in airplanes, or used a phone to call long distance. many of the other medicines people use today had not been discovered.

Meals
Travel back in time with your Girl Scout troop or group. Choose a decade (1920's,1930's, 1940's, 1950's 1960's...) and create a snack that Brownie Girl Scouts would have eaten then. If your period is the 1920's, you don't want to serve frozen foods, since they weren't available until many years later. And don't use plastic cups or plates. Plastic dining materials weren't in common use until the 1950's

Clothes
Pick a time period and create outfits that would have been in fashion then. As you wear your outfits, try to imagine being in those same clothes years ago. How should you move and sit in them? How is your outfit different from the clothes you wear today?

Find out what girls' hairstyles were like back in the decade you've chosen. Wear your hair in that same fashion.

Entertainment
Up until the 1940's no one had television sets. Even in the early 1950's not to many people had them. People played card games and word games, told jokes, and listened to the radio together. But movies have been a popular form of entertainment since the silence films in the early part of the 1900's. Pick a time period (1920's,1930's, 1940's, 1950's 1960's...), and choose songs to play and movies to watch from those years. (For example, Snow White was playing in theaters in the 1930's) With your friends, learn a card game that people were playing back then. Or find a game that your parents or grandparents remember playing.

 Games to Play 


 * Drop the Handkerchief (1950s). With the girls in a circle, one girl walks around the outside of the circle and drops the handkerchief (or bandana) behind person. That person then has to pick up the handkerchief and chase the dropper. If she catches the dropper, the dropper goes out of the circle (and the circle gets smaller). If she doesn't catch dropper before the dropper gets back to the now open space in the circle, the new girl becomes the dropper. The game can continue for a set number of cycles, or until all of the girls are outside of the circle.


 * Poor Pussy (1950s). With the girls in a circle, the girl who is "It" kneels down in front of one of the girls and acts like a kitten, meows, etc. If the girl giggles (which they almost always do), the new girl is It.  If she doesn't giggle the kitty moves on to someone else until someone giggles.

Sing a Song
Travel back in time. Choose a decade (1920's,1930's, 1940's, 1950's 1960's...) and learn a song that was popular then. Sing it for your troop or group, or your family. Then teach it to them.

Language of the Times
Ask people of different ages about expressions they used as children. Look at movies, TV shows, or magazines from those years. How did girls your age talk? What were the "cool" words or sayings? How did girls your age act? What were other manners of the time you've picked?

Service to Others
Pick a time period, and plan and carry out a service project Girl Scouts would have done back then. Did you choose the 1920's? Girls packed and dedicated holiday baskets for the Salvation army. In the 1940's, they rolled bandages for the American men and women serving in World War II. They also ran paper and aluminum drives. In the 1980's, girls your age contributed to food drives for local food pantries. Today, a service project might involve recycling paper or cans or collecting children's videos to donate to a local hospital.