Brownie Badges- time commitment

[44PumpLane]

Hi all,

Bit of a random question in relation to the amount of work for Brownies Badges please.

My twins have done Rainbows and we did a lot of the badges at home, they felt fairly "easy", as you'd expect for the age of the kids involved.

We have just started Brownies this term and we are doing a couple of badges this half term- I'm wondering if we are doing too much!

How long do you typically spend on the three elements of each badge you're working on?

I'm asking because we started looking at the the Invention badge, the first bit is discussing inventions round the home and then finding two female inventors and "presenting" a fact about their life and career.

Seems straightforward but we spent quite a while in a discussion about inventions, the benefits, how things work, what life would look like without the "thing", the kids did some writing/spider charts. Then we did the female inventors, spent time looking up facts and pulling together some info.....it took about 4 hours!

Does that feel reasonable or am I taking too long with the kids? We still have part 2 and 3 to get through (which includes building a prototype)!!!

Help! I'm not sure I can cope with 3 years of every badge taking several weekends worth of work with twins!

[Papillon23]

Does your brownie group expect you to do extra badges on top? My cub and scout groups never did.

We used to aim to do 2/3 badges worth a term in meetings plus enough for their "bronze scout award" over the time they were at cubs.

That generally didn't involve doing much at home, maybe 1 hr of home input a term to get the badges.

Some kids were super keen and did extras but most of them didn't.

I'd also say it sounds like you're going above and beyond the badge requirements - that's fine but if you read what it asked you to do Vs what you did they're fairly substantially different.

I'd imagine one could chat about inventions over dinner in 30-40 mins, do 30 mins research and then talk for 5 mins. So 4+ hours could have been a little over an hour.

[Smartiepants79]

@Papillon23

Does your brownie group expect you to do extra badges on top? My cub and scout groups never did.

We used to aim to do 2/3 badges worth a term in meetings plus enough for their "bronze scout award" over the time they were at cubs.

That generally didn't involve doing much at home, maybe 1 hr of home input a term to get the badges.

Some kids were super keen and did extras but most of them didn't.

I'd also say it sounds like you're going above and beyond the badge requirements - that's fine but if you read what it asked you to do Vs what you did they're fairly substantially different.

I'd imagine one could chat about inventions over dinner in 30-40 mins, do 30 mins research and then talk for 5 mins. So 4+ hours could have been a little over an hour.

Brownies and guiding have unit badges that are done in unit meetings and interest badges which are supposed to be done at home in the girls own time. It’s always been this way. In fact the amount of interest badges has been (Sadly) massively reduced in the last 5 years.
OP - I think you are maybe overdoing the time for each component. It probably shouldn’t have taken 4 hours for a a bit of a chat and writing down a paragraph about each bit.
My experience is that actually very few girls bother with the badges at all any more. My girls do. That means that they both achieved their brownie gold and the eldest is well on her way to guide gold award.
Again, our experience is that very little proof is required for the individual elements, especially any of the discussion or research elements. Different unit leaders may have different expectations.
Overall I’d expect each badge to take no more than 3 hours work. Can your girls not work together on the same thing? They can take turns choosing.

[44PumpLane]

@Papillon23 the format of our Brownies group is that we do Skills Builders activities in the sessions and we do Unit Meeting Hours towards Theme Awards in the sessions, but all Interest badges have to be done at home. So if you want a Theme Award you have to do the Interest Badges at home.


@Smartiepants79 my two are determined to get their Gold Brownie award as we were only able to get Silver at Rainbows due to "the virus", meaning not enough themes covered in sessions 🙂 So we thought we would start off strong and try and do two interest badges from 2 different themes across this holiday.

Thanks for the feedback though, good to know we did too much today! It's actually a relief to hear you think that as I didn't want to "half ass" it but perhaps went into too much depth......I'll definitely try and whip the two of them through the other two stages of the badge tomorrow morning rather than labouring it! Phew!

[Smartiepants79]

They only need one interest badge for each theme and have got a while to complete. During Covid We arranged with their leader to do some unit activities at home so they could get their gold awards. Worth thinking about if it comes to it.

[GuidingSpirit]

Brownie leader here. Firstly, its brilliant that your DTs are interested in doing badges at home as that is half the battle in our unit 😊

The interest badges are specifically designed now for girls to do semi independently, so very much in line with the Guiding ethos, it really should be to the best of their ability. It sounds like you've had a great time working on part 1, but as per a pp, i think you could have spent a bit less time on it. If they were super absorbed and enjoyed themselves, then good for them but def dont feel any pressure to do the same amount of time for part 2 and part 3.

(As an aside, i actually think that Inventing is one of the harder ones. If you want a couple of "lighter" ones to try next, i really love the Aviation or Space badges from the Have Adventures (green) theme and think they are relatively easy ones to achieve too).

[44PumpLane]

Thanks @GuidingSpirit , the "skills for your future" pink section is this terms theme so it was either Languages (which looked way too hard for 7 year olds), Jobs or Inventing, and neither of them was interested in Jobs so we thought that although Inventing might be a bit tougher at least they might have fun. They have both already easily come up with an idea for their invention, it's the "prototype" that's going to be the worst bit! 😂

The other badge they are doing over this hols is the Collecting badge which I thought was quite a straightforward one, but will definitely check out the Aviation/Space badges too if they aren't too bad. The Baking badge also doesn't look too bad!

[GuidingSpirit]

Oh yes, Collecting is a big favourite with our Brownies and I agree relatively straightforward and a nice holiday activity to visit a museum or gallery as well.

Don't forget to save a sample of anything they bake for Brown Owl to test! 😉😅

[Colinfromaccounts24]

This is the bane of my life. My daughter is autistic and a perfectionist so not only does she want to do all the badges (3 to go!), but she wants to do them all thoroughly and it takes HOURS!! But I’ve seen what others do and most definitely do a lot less. We’ve just spent a month doing the speaking out badge as she spent ages on posters, a speech, writing a song etc etc and then actually wanted to put the posters up at school, make the speech at school
before gathering petition signatures. But it does not have to be this way! Save yourself! PS space badge took us ages too, hours spent making an astronaut costume…easiest is the mindfulness one

[44PumpLane]

@Colinfromaccounts24 I fully sympathise here....one of my twins is currently being assessed for ADHD and ASD and can be a bit of a perfectionist, but the issue we have is that when she makes a "mistake" she becomes a fireball of rage, so that always makes activities fun!!

Thanks for the Mindfulness tio, I'll add that to the "easier" list in order to get through a few of them over the next few months!

@GuidingSpirit I tend to go in and help with brownies so will def take in some baked goods when it happens :)

[Colinfromaccounts24]

@44PumpLane

@Colinfromaccounts24 I fully sympathise here....one of my twins is currently being assessed for ADHD and ASD and can be a bit of a perfectionist, but the issue we have is that when she makes a "mistake" she becomes a fireball of rage, so that always makes activities fun!!

Thanks for the Mindfulness tio, I'll add that to the "easier" list in order to get through a few of them over the next few months!

@GuidingSpirit I tend to go in and help with brownies so will def take in some baked goods when it happens :)

Ah yes, the meltdowns if the project doesn't go exactly as envisioned! Very familiar.

[456pickupsticks]

I'd expect a Brownie to have spent a couple of hours doing a badge, and some I'd expect a bit longer but in smaller chunks (we had one Brownie who used duolingo for part of her languages badge, and had a 180 day streak).

I'd also say, that largely, Brownie badges shouldn't be a huge parental effort. Fair enough to get involved where it says 'talk about' or research, or be there to help with baking, but all you as a parent should have to do for 'design an invention' and 'build a prototype' is pull some bits out the recycling, get the glue and paint out of the cupboard and put some newspaper down. It should mostly be the Brownies effort to do things. Parents should be more facilitating that taking an active part in the 'doing' of the badge, and there's lots of clauses you should be able to say 'Mummy is busy at the minute, why don't you see if there's a bit of a Brownie badge you'd like to do yourself whilst I'm busy'.
I know one parent we had used the '40 things that can fly list' in the aviation badge for a before school activity for a couple of weeks, with her daughter adding a few things every day before school whilst her mum got her younger sibling ready, for example. And a couple of girls have come back after the summer holiday, or come in at the end of summer term with collections of shells and rocks collected from beach trips over months for the collecting badge. As long as things are done with intention and effort, I don't mind if they're small consistent efforts.

For our most recent inventing badge part 1 I got an a5 notebook page with three sentences on a couple of different female inventors and their inventions from an 8, nearly 9 year old, I asked a couple of questions and asked where she'd done the research and this was sufficient for me.
If you feel like it's taking too long and you've got other things to do, it's fair to either pause it and get the girls to pick it back up later, or cut down the amount you're doing.