K-State Research and Extension

Happy New Year 4-H Families! I hope everyone had a happy holiday! I have record books on my mind today because on Thursday I will be helping judge area record books for the Northeast Kansas counties. So I thought it might be a good time to remind everyone about record books and why they are important.

Record books are not the most “fun” part of 4-H. But they teach the valuable life lessons of record keeping and analyzing the work that has been done. As adults we have to keep records for multiple things. I have to balance my checking account, keep a household inventory for my insurance and know where the immunization records are for my family. So having youth practice keeping records with a 4-H projects makes these later adult responsibilities less daunting.

There are two types of 4-H record book for Shawnee County. The first type is the Non-Competitive record book. This is a simplified record book that gets youth used to writing things down, making goals and keeping track of meetings they attended. They can fill these forms out with a pencil or do them on the computer.

A 4-H story (summary of their 4-H year) is encouraged but not required. If you can have your youth write a one page 4-H story for their non-competitive book I would call that a win!

The Competitive Record Book is also call the Kansas Award Portfolio or KAP for short. There are the record book forms that are utilized across Kansas and are more detailed and have more requirements. You have to do a 4-H story and many different pictures! So don’t forget to take pictures all year long!

There are three age divisions for Competitive Record Book Forms. The process gets a little harder the older youth get. It is helpful for both types of books to take a look at the forms now and decide with your youth what they would like to submit come September. Record books are for he current year of 4-H. So they are recording what they did in that year from October to September.

If your youth is wondering, “Why would I want to do the competitive forms?” The Competitive record books are how the state wide project winners are selected. When a youth is in the senior division (14-18) their record book competes with other books in that project on the county level, regional level and state level. If you win the state project award you prize is a trip to 4-H National Congress in Atlanta, GA. At Congress youth meet           4-H’ers from all across the  country, have learning sessions and take tours around the city. It is a very big accomplishment!

You can find the record book forms and other tips and tricks on our Shawnee County 4-H website. 

If you have any questions please call, e-mail or leave a comment here and I will answer for everyone! Thanks!

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!

Hello 4-H Families! I hope you all had a great October and have been able to make it to a club meeting. If you are still having trouble hooking up with a club please call the Extension office and we can help. In Shawnee County that number is 785-232-0062 ext. 120.

Last Saturday, our county celebrated a year’s worth of achievement at Achievement Night. It was a lot of fun and we had a great turnout of clubs. 10 of our 11 clubs walked across the stage and we had 113 youth receive their awards on stage. Our Events Council sponsored four prizes and it was fun drawing for the winners after the program.

Last Wednesday, I ran into another new 4-H mom while we were waiting for our kids to be done with kids choir practice. She was telling me that they were really enjoying their club but she was freaking out a little bit. As the 4-H Agent I wanted to know why and get more of that new family perspective that I lost years ago.

At their club meeting the leaders handed them the club calendar and it had all of the club, county and state 4-H activities listed in it. She said it was a FULL calendar and it was just 4-H stuff. Her daughter also does some sports and music things. I was so glad she confessed her feelings to me because I had sage words of advice. “Don’t Do Everything in that Calendar.” It is not a calendar of requirements to be in 4-H but more a list of opportunities for their family.

I’m afraid we scare new families away from our program because we have a project experience or countrywide activity for every week of the year. You have to adjust your thinking from these are required events to these are opportunities to be involved. So I counseled the new mom to look for the activities that don’t conflict with their schedule and pencil them in on her personal calendar.

Then in your second year go back to the events you enjoyed and maybe try something new too. Don’t let 4-H stress you out in November, we will save that for July! 😉

If your club does not do a yearly calendar we will have one available in the office at the first of the year for the countywide events.

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!

Happy National 4-H Week! October is the start of the 4-H year so nationally we celebrate our program the first whole week in October. Clubs have special activities planned and we encourage all youth to wear their 4-H shirts to school and share their favorite parts of 4-H with their friends.

You can tag your 4-H pictures on social media with the hashtag #4HGrowsHere.

It has been fun to search that hashtag and see what 4-H youth across the country and around the globe are doing.

Last week I talked about visiting a 4-H club. I hope you have a meeting on your calendar for October. Once you find a club you like you enroll in Kansas 4-H by using the 4-H online enrollment website. http://ks.4honline.com/

On 4-H online you create a family profile and add your 4-H’ers and select the projects they would like to learn about in the 2015/2016 4-H year. This week’s goal for Daryl and I is to sit down and select projects together. I know what I want him to study but I’m sure he has other ideas. If I want him to be excited about 4-H it is best to let him pick his projects himself. BUT, we are not getting a snake, he has already talked about it and Mom and Dad do get VETO power. (PS- I know there are many lovely pet snakes in the world, I just don’t like them) 🙂

If you are getting stumped on the 4-H online site please e-mail or call our Shawnee County 4-H office professional Kim Seeley. kjseeley@ksu.edu

Kim has also posted this helpful video with step by step instructions on our website. Thanks Kim!

So for now, after you visit a club make a family profile on 4-H online. Next time, we will talk about 4-H projects and I will let you know how letting Daryl pick his own projects went.

Hello! It’s me again with more 4-H fun! 😉

If you know about 4-H because you were involved in another county or you saw the 4-H exhibits at the Shawnee County Fair you might not know how to officially join. You join 4-H by visiting a club meeting and once you find a club you like you enroll online. 4-H is open to all youth 5-18.

Easy, right? But where might these things called club meetings be? Thankfully, we have a link for that! List Of Clubs Here

Also, if you are not in Shawnee County we have a website for all Kansas Counties. You can input your address on this website and your local extension office will help you find a club. How about that!

Feel free to look at all the times and places the clubs meet and visit more than one. It’s always nice to contact the club leader and let them know you are coming. That way, if that meeting time or place has changed the club leader will let you know. Every 4-H club runs a little differently and you want to find the one that works best for your family.

It is a beginning of a new month, so go forth and find a club to join! Also, feel free to ask questions in the comment box or let me know a topic you would like to see covered about 4-H.