Brownie Scouts Bug Try It
Bean just finished up her second year as a daisy scout and we are heading into Brownie land. We haven’t officially bridged but I thought we would get a little jump start on a badge or two this summer.
I had her troop over for 6 hours for bug badge day. That gave us plenty of time for each step, snacks, some down time when they just wanted to play for a bit, extra crafts when the “brain work” got to be a little much for a long day.
After making our bug jars for Step 3, the girls went on a backyard bug safari; here is Bean and one of her fellow brownies hoping to find something besides ants.
We ended up taking home ladybugs in our bug jars (that I bought the day before from a nursery). We put a little oatmeal in the bottom and then added a raisin that had been soaking in water and added our ladybird beetles. They swarmed to the raisins. The girls were fascinated.
For observation, we also had painted lady butterflies, caterpillars just preparing to cocoon, darkling beetles (raised with Bean from meal worms brought home from school in June), and Ladybugs in larvae stage; some of them were just starting to transition to the pupae version, and their tail ends were shortening.
I collected activity and craft and snack ideas and collated them into a PDF document to help me keep track. I let the girls lead as much as possible. I would talk about our steps and give them a couple options. We didn’t complete everything in the document, but every step was done before the girls left for the day.
Bug Try-It Since I hadn’t intended to share this document; I did not cite sources where I pulled the information and pictures from across the internet. I don’t take credit for coming up with all the activities; I just collected and sorted them for easy use in the Brownie Bug Try-It.
Brownies Butterfly Wrist puppet (they also enjoyed this. We used these awesome “solid poster paints” along with some paint pens for detailed work and they turned out super vibrant.
