The Inventor badge is a great choice for a troop that likes to be creative and build. This badge also has a companion Junior badge: Product Designer.
Below is a list of activities to meet the requirements for the Inventor badge. Find ideas for more Brownie badges here.
Wake Up the Creativity
At the start of every meeting I like to have an activity the girls can work on while we wait for everyone to arrive. To wake up their creative thinking, each girl was given a page with ten circles on it. They had to turn each circle into something different. We then had each girl share one thing she made (cookie, planet, basketball, cat, etc.) and we checked to see how many girls did the same thing and how many ideas were unique.
Women Inventors
Learning about women inventors inspires girls to create new things for themselves too. We chose several women and talked about what problems they solved with their inventions. We specifically chose a few inventors who were young girls when they made their creations. Try to find some local inventors too!
Examples:
- Jeanne Villepreux-Power invented the aquarium
- Marie Van Brittan Brown invented the home security system
- Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta invented inflatable, waterproof, solar-powered lights when they were in college
- Ayla Hutchinson invented a tool to safely cut kindling after her mother cut part of her finger off, she was a teenager at the time
Make It Better
Inventing doesn’t need to be only creating ideas from scratch, it can be taking something that exists and making it better!
For this activity, the girls were divided into small groups and given an object they were familiar with – scissors, glue stick, stapler, tape – and asked these questions:
- What is the purpose of the object?
- What works well?
- What is challenging or could be better?
- How would you make it better?
After considering these questions, they discussed a variety of ideas to make the items better. In some cases they had to be reminded that the improvement should be solving a problem, and not just making it cute. Each group shared their solution with the troop because it’s always good to practice speaking to an audience!
Be an Inventor – Solve a Problem
The final, and most exciting, activity was to create an invention to solve a problem they each have. The girls thought about their day and what tasks can be challenging, e.g., getting dressed, brushing teeth, getting to school, doing homework, taking care of a pet.
They drew out an invention and then built it using a variety of materials – Lego, magnetic tiles, tinker toys, etc. Each girl created her structure, then demonstrated the invention and what problem it solved.
