Earning the Brownie Girl Scout Numbers and Shapes Try-It

This Try-It is called Numbers and Shapes, but it is mostly about shapes. Shapes in math are called geometry. This can be daunting, however, at this age, girls can have a lot of fun exploring different shapes and not even know they are learning something about math! To earn the Numbers and Shapes Try-It, girls must complete 4 activities. This Try-It can be done as a troop or individually. It is fun to do either way as girls will enjoy working with these shapes no matter who else is around.

I like to earn Try-Its as a troop. So if you are going to do this as a troop, set up stations if you have a large troop or do each activity together as one group if you have a smaller group and would rather do it that way. You can also complete this in one meeting or make it be a part of craft time for several different meetings.

1. Origami
This is quite a challenge and if you are doing stations, you probably will need someone at this station to assist. Make sure you practice first before you get to the meeting. It may be a challenge for you as well. An origami cat is one of the simplest pieces of origami to create. Look up online how to do it or find a book at the library on origami. Make sure you have square papers to do this with, otherwise, they will not turn out right. You can fold a rectangle piece of paper and cut it to make a square if you want to save money since square paper is expensive. It needs to be a good square and not crooked either or it will not work as well.
Explain to them as they are working on their origami how this is the Japanese art of folding paper. Note as they are folding the different shapes they see appear from their folds. For difficulty, if you so dare, you can try some other animals from online or the origami book.

2. Jigsaw Puzzles
The girls will love making a puzzle of their very own. With parent’s permission, have each girl bring in a picture from home for this project or you can just cut out pretty magazine photos if you wish.
Using cardstock as the base, glue the picture onto the base and allow to dry for a bit. You might want to do this at an earlier meeting because little hands get carried away with the glue sometimes and it might take a long time to dry. If you are using glue sticks, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Once the photos are secured on the cardstock, let each girl cut up the picture in any way they choose as to make puzzle pieces. Remind them however, they don’t want little tiny bits of picture that will get lost or impossible to put back together.

3. Math Shapes
Making patterns or pictures from a set of shapes can be a difficult task but it is fun and gets the girls thinking. In order to do this, take a piece of construction paper and draw lines on the paper to make the entire piece of paper different shapes. All the lines should connect in some way to form triangles, squares, rectangles, trapezoids, and other shapes. Make it simple enough for the age of the girls. If you want to make it a little easier, first cut the paper down to a large square and then draw the lines inside. Make the same pattern of lines on each paper for all of the girls. They can cut on the lines to get their shapes. Challenge them to come up with different pictures or patterns using the shapes they cut out. Then after a set amount of time, give them the biggest challenge of putting it back together the way it was before they cut it. They may think that is easy at first until they start working on it and realize it is a little more challenging than they thought!

4. Nature Shapes
Finally, this activity will allow their senses to get going and look for everyday things that are a certain shape. Depending on where you hold your meetings, take a walk outside or look around your meeting room and try to find all the different shapes that make up the environment where you are. This will get the girls to focus more intently on everyday objects to figure out what shapes they are in. To throw numbers in this category, make it a scavenger hunt and see if they can find so many triangles, squares, etc. Give them a number and have them start looking! Remind them that they are other shapes besides the basics they can look for as well.


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