Girl Scouts are known for their cookies. But what they do goes way beyond selling those delectable treats. They also are exposed to a number of activities that you don’t get to learn in school. Being outdoors and living, playing, and surviving in nature are all part of being a Girl Scout. And for many girls, being in the outdoors and going to camp is one of their favorite parts! Get young girls exposed to Girl Scouts the right way by earning the Outdoor Adventurer Try-It and see how to start having fun outdoors Girl Scout style!
The best way to do this Try-It is to have an overnight at a council camp area or in someone’s backyard. That would be one of the four activities needed to complete the Try-It. While you are at the camp site, you can complete the remaining 3 activities to earn the Outdoor Adventurer Try-It. Depending on how the parents feel about their child camping overnight, you may want to invite them to come along as well. However, that could also turn into a big disaster so you might want to avoid that. It is up to you and how you want to handle things. If you have a large troop though, you probably will need some help. And be sure to camp close to home for the first time so the parents can come pick up anyone who is sick or inconsolable. (You typically shouldn’t let this happen, but for the first time, it may be a good idea. It’s up to you.)
1. Plan the overnight camping trip
Have one meeting time set aside just for planning this trip. Get the girls involved so they can see what will be happening and let them have a part in the planning process to make this trip fun! Make sure to tell them what other activities they need to do to earn the Try-it and about how long each will take. Then let them decide what else they want to do while they are there. Also, let them decide what food they want to eat. Make sure they make out a packing list and include clothes for all types of weather. Most importantly, teach them about “Leave No Trace.” They need to be prepared to leave the place better than they found it.
Once you are at the campsite and unpacked, you can do the remaining activities in any order you wish. Just make sure you plan arrival and departure times to give the girls plenty of time to complete everything.
2. Day Hike
Spend a good part of the morning or afternoon taking a hike through the location in which you are staying. If it is in someone’s backyard, you might need to plan this activity for a different day where you can go somewhere to hike. If there is a nature trail in the area, follow that path. If not, do a color hike where each girl picks a color and tries to find items of that color. Spend as much time on the hike as you wish. Make sure the girls bring water bottles and provide a granola bar snack if you are going to be gone for awhile.
3. Touch, Smell, Listen
Get the senses flowing with this fun activity. You can work on this during the hike or make it as a scavenger hunt for a different activity to do in the afternoon or morning. What they will need to do is basically look for things that smell a certain way, sound a certain way, and feel a certain way. To do this, they will need to utilize their senses to find the objects. Create lists of certain textures, smells, and sounds for the girls to find in the outdoors. They can include, rough, smooth, bumpy, wet, crumbly, hard, flowery smelling, sweet smelling, fruity, bad smelling, leaves rustling, birds chirping, water running, animals moving, wind blowing, etc. Make sure you make out the lists ahead of time so you don’t have to spend time thinking about things in each category. You can break the girls up into teams or pairs to find the objects.
4. Dress for the Weather Relay
This will be a fun relay race to cap off the night. If you are at a council camping facility and are staying in a building, this is a good activity to do inside after it gets dark. Otherwise, if you are staying in tents, you might want to consider doing this before the sun goes down if you need to do it outside.
To prepare for this game, you need to find some adult size clothes for various types of weather. Things to include might be shorts, tank tops, sweaters, long pants, rain gear, hats, etc. Make sure you have enough of each type to match the number of teams you are going to have. Two teams will need two sets of all clothes. Place items in a large trash bag or duffel bag. At the starting line, leave the bag of clothes for each team. The teams will line up behind the bag. Think of a weather situation and at the start, the girls will have to find the clothes for that type of weather from the bag and put on. So, it you say it is raining, they will need to look through the bag and find the rain gear and put it on. They will then run down to a predetermined spot, turn around, come back, take off the clothes, and put them back in the bag. The next girl follows and so on until all girls have finished.
Make this overnight a lot of fun and keep them busy so they will be tired and go right to sleep. For some girls, this may be the first time away from home or the first time camping. Bedtime will be the hardest time to cope. Once they get past that, they will enjoy this time and want to do it again and again.