Girl Guides Ontario - Girl Guides Ontario - Emergency Preparedness Challenge - Brownies

Emergency Preparedness Challenge - Brownies

This challenge will help Brownies complete all or part of the following Keys or Interest badges!

• Key to I Can – Staying Safe
• Key to I Can - First Aid
• Key to I Can – Pet Zoo
• Key to I Can – Safety Checks
• Key to the Arts – Act it Out
• Key to Active Living – Go for It (Interest)

Week #1 - Emergencies
• Define an emergency
• Natural emergencies
• Natural emergencies in the community

Week #2 - Planning Ahead
• Family emergency plan
• Emergency survival kit
• Pet emergency survival kit

Week #3 - Safety Skills
• Lifesaving skills
• Fire safety skills
• Water safety skills

Click here to purchase the Emergency Preparedness crest

Week #1 - Emergencies

Materials Needed
Book on natural emergency
Option: Create your own flashcards to help girls visualise the emergency

Introduction (5-10min)
Pose the question “What is an emergency?” Invite girls to offer their definitions. Encourage girls to share any experiences they may have had relating to emergencies.

Game (10min) – Emergency or Not?
Tell the girls they are going to decide if a situation is an emergency or not. If it is an emergency, they will show thumbs up. If it is not an emergency, they will show thumbs down. After you have asked about the ten situations listed, invite the girls to suggest their own situations.
• I lost my bike
• There is a tornado moving toward my house
• My neighbour’s house is on fire
• My television won’t work
• A boy fell in the pool and he can’t swim
• There is a forest fire in my neighbourhood
• My cat is lost
• The roads in my town are flooded
• There has been a car crash
• I have to go to school tomorrow

Story (5-10min) – Active Reading
Bring in a book about a natural emergency (e.g., tornado, ice storm, earthquake, etc.). You may wish to choose one that reflects a hazard in your community or choose from the list. Choose some places in the story where the girls can participate. Prepare the girls ahead of time for their parts (e.g., make a whoosh sound when the word “wind” is said, making rain sounds on the floor with their hands). As you read the story, have the girls participate.
Talk about other types of natural emergencies that could occur in your community.

Craft – (5-10min) “Going Clayzy”
Using modelling clay or your own play dough ask the girls to create a picture in 3-5 minutes of a natural emergency. They can label it or for fun you can ask the others to decide what it represents.

Game (10min) – Emergency (like Ship to Shore)
This is a very active game. Assign each of the four walls a direction (north, south, east, west) and the middle of the room as home. Go through all of the actions with the girls until they are able to remember them. Have all the girls start in the middle (home). Call out one of the directions or an action (you can also introduce a few of them at a time and add more as the game goes on). The girls race to run to the appropriate wall/home or complete the action. Play a few practice rounds. When you are ready to play elimination, the last girl(s) to reach the wall/home, to complete the action or without a partner/group is/are out. You can call a few actions in succession before eliminating if you wish.

Tornado – lay down and cover your head
Lightning – squat down and grab your knees
Earthquake – duck down, cover your head and hold on to a partner
Flood – stand on your tip toes and reach up
Blizzard – find a partner and huddle together for warmth
Heat wave – fan yourself and pretend to drink water
Evacuate – get out of the middle
Shelter-in-place – two people form a roof with their hands and a third gets inside

Alternate Game - Is it an Emergency? Spinner Game

Week #2 – Planning Ahead

Materials Needed
Emergency survival kit & additional non-kit items (suggest one emerg kit for family and a personal kit for girls to carry)
• Large blanket
• Pet safety sign template and address of the local OSPCA branch or another animal services group in your community
• Markers or crayons
• Emergency contact cards - use this as part of the personal emergency kit girls make – encourage them to put the kit into their backpacks even for school in case they ever run into a problem.

Introduction (10min)
Review the definition of an emergency and the different types of natural emergencies. Tell the girls that there are things we can do to get ready just in case an emergency happens. One of the things our family should do is put together an emergency survival kit. An emergency survival kit has all of the things we would need to be safe and comfortable for three days. A personal emergency kit would contain water, contact card and band-aid for example.

Game (10min) – Emergency Survival Kit Memory
Display the items from an emergency survival kit. Talk to the girls briefly about what each item is for in an emergency. Cover the items with a large blanket. Ask the girls to remember which items were in the kit. As the correctly remember an item, remove it from under the blanket. If the girls get stuck on an item, provide clues based on the item’s use.

Game (5min) – Survival Kit Relay Race
Put all of the survival kit items and a number of non-survival items in a pile. Tell the girls to imagine that were stuck in a dark room with no electricity. There are items in the pile that they would need to stay safe and be comfortable. There are other items that wouldn’t really help us. Divide the girls into two teams. Relay style, have a girl from each team run to the pile and pick one thing they think would belong in the emergency survival kit. When all of the girls are done, have them sit in a circle with their items. Put the leftover items in the middle along with a duffel bag.

Discussion (5-10min) – Emergency Survival Kit Contents
With the girls sitting in a circle, have each girl share what their item would be helpful for. After they have shared their item, have them place it in the duffel bag. Any items that don’t belong in the emergency survival kit can go in a pile beside the bag. After all of the girls have shared their items, talk about the items that were left behind and why they wouldn’t be good (e.g., bread – wouldn’t last, hair dryer – needs electricity).

After second week, girls are encouraged to make their own emergency kits and bring the kit or photo of their kit to discuss for week three.

Craft (10min) – Pet Safety Sign
Tell the girls that it is important to plan for our pets in case an emergency happens. Since an emergency might happen when we are not at home, we need to let emergency responders know if there is a pet in our house. Provide each of the girls with the sign template and markers. Have the girls fill in the number and type of animals they have, and draw a picture of their pet in the space provided. Have the girls include the address of the local OSPCA branch or other animal service organization in the community. Girls who do not have a pet can create one for a pet they know or a pet they wish they had.
Emergency Care for Pets - OSPCA

Discussion (10min) – Family Emergency Plan Take Home
You may wish to invite the girls’ parents to listen in on this part of the meeting to listen to the discussion. A successful family plan is built with the entire family participating. Talk about the importance of having two meeting places for your family. One meeting place should be just outside your home, on the same side of the street (e.g., a neighbour’s house). This is good for emergencies such as a house fire. The second meeting place should be outside of your neighbourhood (e.g., a relative’s house who lives out-of-town). Everyone in the family needs to know these two meeting places. Talk about the importance of being able to contact your family members in an emergency. This includes cell numbers, work numbers, school numbers, family contact numbers, etc. Provide the girls with contacts cards to take home for their family emergency plan.

Week #3 – Safety Skills

Materials Needed
• Home Fire Escape Plans
• Pencils
• Water safety quiz (click to download)
• Small personal chalkboards/whiteboards/blank paper (depends on what you have available)
• Chalk/dry erase markers or pencils
• Toy or real phone (optional)

Introduction (5-10min)
Tell the girls that they are going to learn some safety skills today – fire safety, water safety and first aid/9-1-1. Talk about why it is important to know how to stay safe and help others stay safe.

Review the kits brought in by girls or a photo of their kit and re-emphasize the importance of the role of the kit in the overall plan for safety and Being Prepared.

Drama (10min) – Calling 9-1-1
Break the girls into small groups and assign each group a Guider. In small groups, review the things that a person calling 9-1-1 needs to know (e.g., name, address, phone number, nature of the emergency, etc.). Give the girls a situation (e.g., your babysitter collapsed) and have the practice calling 9-1-1. The Guider will be the call taker. Give each girl in the group a chance to practice calling. Bring a real or toy phone to make it realistic.

Craft (10min) – Fire Escape Plan
Talk about the importance of having a plan if there is a fire at home. You should know two ways out of every room in your home. It is also important to have a meeting place where your family gets together when they have to evacuate. Provide each girl with a Home Fire Escape Plan to bring home and explain how they would use it (where they should draw the layout of their house on the grid and mark two ways out of each room e.g., window or door). Encourage the girls to share their escape plan with their parents.

Game (15min) – Water Safety Quiz
Divide the girls into four teams. Ask the teams a question from the Emergency Management Ontario Water Safety Quiz. Have the team decide whether the answer is true or false and write their answer on their chalkboard/whiteboard or sheet of paper. Each team who gets the answer correctly gets a point. The team(s) with the most points at the end wins.