Earn a badge with your troop while coming for a few hours during the day or staying overnight at the Bell Museum! Our programs for scouts are lead by Bell Museum Interpretive Staff and built around fun and engaging activities designed to fufill all the requirements for the badge you choose to pursue. If we do not have a specific badge on our website, please call us at 612-624-9050 - it might be possible for us to teach it!

Group Size: Minimum group size is eight. Maximum is 36.

Scheduling: Programs can be scheduled from September through April. Day programs are from 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. or 1:30-4:30 p.m. Overnight experiencescan be scheduled for Friday or Saturday nights, beginning at 7:00 p.m. and ending the following day at 10:00 a.m. Please call to check availability.

Cost: Day programs cost $7 per person and includes interpretive staff, all materials needed for activities and entrance to the museum. Overnight experiences cost $50 per child for groups of 8-19 youth or $45 per child for groups of 20-36 youth and costs include interpretive staff, all materials needed for activities, an evening snack and light breakfast. One adult chaperone (free admission) is required per 10 children. Additional adults $20 each.

Please call 612-624-9050 or e-mail registrations@bellmuseum.org to make reservations for Friday or Saturday overnight programs.

Daisy Girl Scout Badges

Explore MN: Come and learn about what all living things need to live and discover the animals and plants that live in MN. We will play games, take a tour of the dioramas and make a great nature craft.

Brownies Try-It Badges

Animals: Explore the world of animals. Take an after-hours tour of the Bell Museum and find out why animals have very different bodies and ways of moving. Examine animal shelters, listen to the sounds animals make and find out what you can do to protect these animals and their habitats.

Plants: Take a tour of the Bell Museum’s dioramas and discover what plants live in different areas of Minnesota. Compare and contrast leaves from tropical plants with those native to Minnesota, discover what food chains are and why plants play such an important role in them. Activities include planting seeds to learn about plant life cycles and constructing tree journals to track the life of a tree close to home.

Senses: Experience the world through the senses. Find out how your sense of smell compares to that of other animals, make a map of your tongue to see how different flavors register in different parts of the mouth, and discover how hearing works by designing a pair of “super-ears” to hear as well as wolves, bats and other animals.

Science in Action: We will go on a technology hunt, make weird globs that is not quite a solid or a liquid, blow up balloons without using our breaths, make a butterfly of many colors, and play with lights and colors. Science is all around us and we are going to understand it.

Science Wonders: Science or magic? Lets find out while we make homemade paper, make invisible ink, go on a magnet hunt and play with static electricity.

Space Explorer: Meet a University of Minnesota graduate student who studies astronomy and find out what astronomers do and what they know about the planets in our solar system. Scouts have the opportunity to examine a telescope and, if it’s a clear night, use it to look at stars and planets. Activities include a demonstration the cycle of the moon using a Moon Globe, constructing a constellation, learning to read a star map, and instruction in using the sun to tell time. (Only for Overnights)

Junior Girl Scout Badges

Earth Connections: Discover the connections between animals, people and plants in the web of life. Explore Minnesota’s major habitats by touring the Bell’s dioramas and identifying food chains and food webs. Find out how to identify different tree species and read tree rings to better understand a tree’s health history. Examine adaptations animals make to survive in their unique habitats and how humans fit in to Earth’s life cycle.

Eco-Action: Explore the connections between human behavior and the state of the natural world. Learn about food chains and food webs and how different species depend on one another. Take a tour of the Bell’s dioramas to learn about threatened and endangered plants and animals in Minnesota and find out how to take part in protecting the natural world around us.

Ecology: Ecology is the study of animals and plants, their relationship to each other and to habitats. What do living things need to survive and how do they go about meeting these needs? Take a tour of the Bell’s dioramas to explore the habitats of Minnesota and learn about the species that live in each one and how these species are connected to one another.

Fossil Hunt: Lets go hunt for fossils at Lilydale, while discovering how they were formed and what they can tell us about the past.

Plants & Animals: Discover the diversity of Minnesota’s plant and animal life and how living things adapt in order to survive. Learn about the system used by scientists to name and group animals and plants. Activities include a bird scavenger hunt in the diorama halls, looking at prehistoric animals and making fossils.

Science Discovery: Meet a woman scientist and find out what inspired her to work in the field of science. Become a scientist as you conduct some simple experiments of your own and then take part in a real research project studying the behavior of squirrels. Get answers to your most burning questions about the natural world!

Science in Everyday Life: Science is everywhere- in a spider web, a ray of light, even a pile of dirt! Observe and discover the exciting world of science that is around you everyday.

Sky Search: Meet a University of Minnesota graduate student who studies astronomy and find out what astronomers do and what they know about the planets in our solar system. Scouts have the opportunity to examine a telescope and, if it’s a clear night, use it to look at stars and planets. Activities include making a star map, inventing a constellation and examining real meteorites. A fascinating and busy night! (Only for Overnights)

Water Wonders: Get up close to some animals that make their homes in or near water and find out about water-based food webs, the water cycle and the importance of clean water. Create your own miniature Earth terrarium and study the simple and yet highly unique chemistry of water, the substance that makes our existence possible!

Weather Watch: Explore the world’s weather by learning to read weather maps, identify clouds and learning the signs of dangerous weather. Activities include a rain cloud demonstration and creating a device to simulate the rise and fall of air masses.

Cub Scout or Boy Scout Badges

Forester Badge: Learn what a forester does in his or her job and why they are important to the health of the forest. Discover how to find the age of a tree, layers of a forest canopy and be able to ID different trees in MN.

Naturalist Badge: Do you know what a naturalist is? It is a person who studies plants and animals. We will become naturalist and study the MN plants, animals, touch the live animals and learn about bird migration.