5 Fun Activities To Earn The Junior Playing the Past Badge

If your looking for ideas to make your meeting more fun while teaching your girls more about women in the past, you have come to the right place. Using some of these activities below to learn and focus on ideas during the frontier times. Your girls will get a understanding how girls lived and survived during the pioneer days.

Below are a few ideas to get you started.

Before jumping into some ideas, do you want to skip all the planning? If so, use this Activity Booklet which will take your girls on a journey to imagine what it was like to live in the past.

The girls will first examine what her typical day looks like, then compare it to the day in the life of a frontier girl. The girls will walk through a frontier girls life, while doing “Pioneer Activities” to let the girls walk in the shoes of someone in the past. At the end they will compare how different life today is from the life of someone in the past. In addition to the walk in my Shoes activities, the girls will learn more about the frontier through a fun relay matching game, and sing a song from frontier times. Learn more and get yours today!

Be sure to also checkout these other activities your girls will love:

• Creative Writing Fun: Scribe Activities
• Shop The Smarter Way: Savvy Shopper Activities
• Focus On What Matters: Staying Fit Activities
• How To Be A Amazing Detective Activities

What is better than having a snack that fits into the badge you are earning. It is even better when the food you are eating teaches your girls something and it is a fun craft before enjoying the treat.

Fun Facts about cover wagons: The covered wagon used to cross the plains. The cloth top protected people and possessions from extreme weather conditions. The covered wagon was invented in 1749 in Pennsylvania. A typical covered wagon weighed about 1,300 pounds when empty, and they tried to keep the weight of the added cargo to no more than 2,000 pounds.

Share these facts with your girls while making this cute cover wagon snack that I found on another blog. Here are the complete directions for the covered wagon snack craft.

Dare Base – Any number of girls can play this game, but the two teams must have the same number of players. Two bases are made about 30 yards apart. The teams are called A and B. Members of team A see how close they can go to the base of team B without getting tagged. This is continued by each team alternately with the opposite team. Any person tagged must go to the opposite base as a penalty. The object of each team is to see how many members or players they can get for their base. The team capturing the largest number of players at the end of a given time wins.

Blindman Bluff – A blindfolded girl is led into the center of the circle. As that girl turns around three or four times, the people in the circle chant:

• “How many horses has your father got? “Three.” “What colors are they?” “Black, blue and gray.” “Turn about, and turn about, and catch whom you can.”

The blindfolded player then tries to capture someone and guess their name. If the player does not guess the right name, they must try again with a new person. When successful the person captured and named correctly, must in turn be blindfolded.

Chain Tag – Two people are chosen to be “it” in Chain Tag. Those chosen clasp each other’s hand and begin chasing others. When they tag someone else, that person needs to link hands with one of them to make a chain of three. The chain grows longer as more people are tagged.

Charades – Include pioneer activities like fishing, plowing, making a fire, sewing clothes by hand, cutting down a tree, riding a horse, planting a garden, pushing a handcart, etc.

Amazon has a pile of different paper doll booklets. This one particular I loved because it showed the mid-Victorian-era costumes including elegant evening dresses, bridal gowns, and daytime wear. Outfits are accompanied by hats and fanciful hair styles of the period. There are 2 dolls and 16 costume to put on them. Get yours here: Paper Dolls 1860-1879 (Victorian Paper Dolls)

If you are crafty and want to make bonnets or each of your girls

If you don’t want to spend the time planning, our Activity Booklet has step-by-step instructions with activities that don’t require any planning other than gathering supplies and printing booklets.

Well of course give them the badge to display proudly on their vest, they earned it! Additionally If you are like many leaders we want to award our girls when they complete something even beyond just the patch. One great way to show achievement is with a certificate. Don’t worry you don’t have to make them, I found a resource that has done all the work for you and all you have to do is print them and customize the certificates with each girl’s name, badge or award earned, date, and troop leader. Editable certificates perfect for awarding girls after earning a badge.

I get asked a lot what other resources are out there on the internet for Leaders. I have done some digging over the years and have used many of the resources myself. I compiled a list of some great companies that sell patches, programs and also other bloggers offering amazing resources that may fit your needs even better than my site did. Checkout what I found.