Girl Scout Brownie Painting Badge Activity

A few months ago I was asked to share my skills with a local girl scout troop and teach them some different types of painting. After brainstorming a little on what we could do, I reached out to my friends at DecoArt to ask if they’d be willing to help make this class an awesome experience for the girls. They generously sent us some products to use to make some amazing art! Here’s a recap of my plan and how the activity went.

This post was sponsored by DecoArt. All thoughts and opinions are mine. There are also affiliate links in this post for your convenience, meaning if you order through these links I do get a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my Disclosures page for more details. Thanks!

Brownie Painting Badge Girl Scout Requirements are as follows:

Get Inspired
Paint the Real World
Paint a Mood
Learn to Paint without Brushes
Learn to Paint a Mural

I’ll explain how to met the goals for each of the five points and a little about the process:

1. Get Inspired –

For this requirement I opened the meeting by sharing different pieces of art that I’ve made and showing them in some art books different types of things they could paint. We talked about abstract and realism and all sorts of other types of art they’ve learned about in the past. This prefaced the rest of the activity.

We then split into three different groups. At each table was a different painting project to fulfill a requirement. They went as follows:

2. Paint the Real World –

For this table I had some books that showed examples of landscaping and still life, some acrylic paints and different sizes of paint brushes. The girls were able to choose what they wanted to paint into a 5×7 canvas. They chose everything from landscapes to oceanviews to self-portraits. They did a fantastic job.

3. Paint a Mood –

For this table I decided to have them do some rock painting! Rock painting can be so fun and I thought they would really get into it. I had a paper that listed what types of moods are represented by certain colors and left it up to them if they wanted to paint moods with different colors or if they wanted to be more literal and paint emojis or faces. We had many creative ideas come to fruition!

4. Paint without a Brush –

This table was all set up for paint pouring! The girls were all extremely excited about this and I was so glad to tell then all about acrylic paint pouring and using pouring medium. Some girls opted to do the single pour technique where you put all your colors into one cup and flip it onto the canvas, and other girls opted to do the strainer technique where you pour random amounts of all the different colors into a strainer one at a time to make a really awesome design. They all did an amazing job.

Luckily, I had a few other parents helping this activity go smoothly! I really needed them to and was so thankful for their help.

As we mixed the pouring medium and paints I was able to explain to them why we needed to do that, how many colors you’d want to use for it to look it’s best, and all the other tips I have learned. They were so attentive and excited. It was a lot of fun!

We did a couple of the single pour style pieces. We added a few drops of silicone as well to get cells to appear. It worked really well as they lifted their cups and the colors spread out over the canvas.

Other girls did the strainer technique using each color one at a time. It is really fun to watch that pattern emerge as you continue adding paint to the center.

As you can see every poured piece was a creative success and turned out beautiful and unique!

5. Painting a Mural –

After everyone had finished the other three stations they got together and worked on painting a fun “mural” on a large sheet of brown paper. It was such a fun experiment to see how differently they all interpreted the “Flower Power” theme I had given them.

As you can see, we had a fabulous time and I think the girls really learned a lot about the different ways we can all make art. We are all artists in our own way! Even silly ones at that!

I just want to give a huge shout-out to DecoArt again for working with me to make a fun night for these young ladies! Check out their products because they have such a huge variety of paints from these acrylics to chalk paints, outdoor paints and so much more!

Hope you enjoyed reading and were able to get some ideas for classes you might help teach to young kids. These skills and flexing our creative muscles are so important!

Get out there and create something!