From the 4-H Agent to the first time 4-H family, choose your projects wisely! It is easy to get overwhelmed if you sign up for too many. Trust me, your children will want to do them all. They do sound super fun and it is hard to choose but setting a limit of two or three your first year is wise.
Keeping that game plan in mind I was totally prepared to shoot down Daryl’s hopes of multiple projects for his first year. What I wasn’t prepared for was this:
Me-“Daryl what project would you like to take your first year of 4-H?”
Daryl-“ummm I don’t care.”
Me, a little panicky-“What! Don’t you want to do arts and crafts, dog, woodworking, electric and Legos??”
Daryl-“Sure all of those.”
Me, realizing I just blew the game plan-“It would be better if you just did two or three honey.”
Daryl-“But I want to do all of those, YOU said them.”
Me-“OK, how about Dog and Electric”
Daryl-“Only if I can use Vinny”
Me, knowing that 13 year old Vinny deserves better in his old age than to be drafted as a 4-H dog in his twilight- “You have to use Purl, she is only two and Vinny is too old.”
Daryl-“OK but I want to do crafts too.”
Me-“Deal!”
So now that you and your new 4-H’er have some projects this is a great time to set goals. It is hard to set goals at the end of the 4-H year when you are looking back to see if you achieved them. Let’s make the last week of October goal setting time. For your first year appropriate goals are to learn something in the project, be specific about what you want to learn. Make a talk about your project, you will have opportunities in 4-H to make project talks. And, it is icing on the cake if you can work a service project into your 4-H project. For example if you trained your dog well enough to visit an after school program or a rest home that would be a great service project with your dog. So learning, sharing and serving are all great goals!
