K-State Research and Extension

I’ve got a lot of good stuff to tell you about today! We talked about project talks last time so I wanted to share a couple of other different types of presentations youth can do at Club Days. 

First, there is a demonstration. The name really says it all, a 4-H demonstration is when a youth shows the audience how to do something. At the end of a demonstration there should be a finished product. They will not try to explain a whole 4-H project but focus on how to do one thing. Materials and space needed should all be appropriate for a classroom setting with a time limit of 10 minutes for Juniors and Intermediates and 15 minutes for Seniors.

Examples of 4-H Demonstrations are making a trail mix for Foods and Nutrition project, how to tie a scarf for the clothing projects or how to polish a rock for the Geology project.

If what you want to do would be hard for either the indoor setting or the 10-15 time limit you might consider doing an illustrated talk. The object of the illustrated talk is to also teach how to do something. But, the illustrated talk uses posters or a projected slides to illustrate the point. This is a way a youth could teach how to show a pig, or how to paint a bedroom without have to bring a pig to club days (please don’t do that) or messing with paint cans. The presenter of an illustrated talk or project talk should ask for and be ready for questions. Answering questions about what they taught is a part of their score.

For more information about Club Days please visit the Shawnee County 4-H site.

I would also like to tell you about an event that will be here before we know it, January Jamboree. January Jamboree is an afternoon of arts and crafts hosted by all of the 4-H clubs of Shawnee County. Each club usually sponsors a craft and if you would like to make it you pay a small fee and you do the craft right then and there. The price of the crafts ranges from free to $2.oo. Examples of past crafts include bird feeders, pillows, marshmallow shooters and magnets just to name a few!

This year January Jamboree will be at Countryside United Methodist Church (3221 SW Burlingame Rd, Topeka, KS 66611) on January 2nd from 1-4pm. This event is open to all youth in Shawnee County and is a great way for new 4-H members to meet youth from across the county. It is also a fun event to come if you would just like more information about 4-H and are trying to decide if you would like to join or not. There is also a small concession stand available. I hope to see you there! Happy Holidays!!

Hello new families! I hope you are all enjoying this fall weather in December! I promised you a blog post about what is a project talk and why you should have your child do one. So here it is.

A project talk is very simply a short talk about one of a youth’s 4-H projects. The talk should do 3 things:

Tell about their experience in the project

Give some specific information about the project

And it should promote the project so other youth want to do it too

For many of your club meetings 4-H’ers will give project talks during the program portion of the meeting. This is one of those valuable public speaking opportunities that 4-H provides. At Club Days when youth are in front of a judge the time of a project talk should not exceed 5 minutes. Younger members usually struggle to get to three minutes with older members having to really focus to not go over five minutes. Youth 7-13 can give project talks at club days. Senior 4-H members have to enter into the public speaking category.

A project talk should not show how to do something or tell how to do something. Those are demonstrations and illustrated talks. The Project talk is to tell about a project. Youth can make a visual aid that will sit on a easel while they are talking.

Youth should practice giving talks that have a beginning, middle and an end. If a 4-H’er is not sure how to make these parts of a speech a good rule of thumb is tell the audience what you are going to talk about, talk about it, then remind the audience what you talked about. That seems pretty simple for an adult but it a great starting point for a beginning public speaker.

Here are the rules for all of the club days events.

Here is a tip sheet on project talks with more helpful tips.

If your youth only does one thing at Club Days this year (Feb. 13th) I hope they give a project talk! If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at the Extension Office. 785-232-0062 ext. 120!

I hope to have another blog out this week about demonstrations and illustrated talks!