Every year on the 22nd February Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and onwards celebrate World Thinking Day. I’ve always found it a fun day and am so happy the tradition continues to this day. Here’s what we did for World Thinking Day 2017.

World Thinking Day 2017 was the 22nd February. All Guides of all ages celebrate it – from Rainbows to leaders. It’s a day to think about other Guides around the world. Besides this, you can wear your uniform to school if you get permission from the head teacher.

This year felt like a big deal – the majority of schools came on board and said children could wear their uniforms. I would say most of our group did – and they loved telling us about it as well.

Our meeting was the day after Thinking Day, and I thought it would be good to post about what we did.

I signed up to the forums at Guiders.co.uk. A lot of other groups from around the world were asking if anyone would like to swap cards or postcards. I’m also part of a Brownie leaders group on Facebook so found loads of other groups to swap with there.

I also messaged Facebook friends with children of a similar age to H to see if they knew anyone. I got a couple of troops in the US which when I told the girls, they were pretty excited about.

Once we’d had pow wow, the girls went into their sixes. I found a quiz on the internet for Thinking Day, each six got a copy of the Brownie Adventures book to find the answers. It made me happy to see them all work as a group and make sure everyone got a turn to answer a question. This gave us time to set up the next task – writing the postcards!

I bought some simple postcards from WH Smith – you can buy packs of 25. I printed out some World Guide Badges which the girls could stick onto their cards if they wanted, or they decorate the card. The content was their choice. The girls had read cards from other groups they knew what kind of things to write.

Our main leader picked up some girl shapes from Poundland (12 for £1). I found some pictures of uniforms from other countries and printed them out for each six, laminating them for future use. I made sure the pictures were on both sides.

Each girl could choose which uniform they wanted to copy and had a choice of eight different ones.

Some girls were quicker at this than others so we had a World Guiding Badge dot to dot for them to fill in. If they finished that then they help others in their six.

To finish off we had a World Thinking Day Candle Ceremony which is a nice way to finish the day. With us having 25 Brownies there it took a long time; In future we’ll send the girls through in twos!

I enjoyed celebrating World Thinking Day 2017. It was a good excuse to get my old Brownie and Guide Badges out as well!

The theme for World Thinking Day 2017 is GROW. I’d like to think that our meeting has helped our Brownies grow their knowledge of other girls in other parts of the world doing the same as them.

I’m hoping that next year we’ll get more Brownies from other countries! If you’re reading this and you’re a leader drop me a message as we would love to swap cards again.

I’m a leader in training at our local Brownies. Thank you to all the Guiding Resources linked above who have these fantastic ideas for Thinking Day!