4H is a family
activity and a great learning experience for your child. Follow through is
the key to success as a family in 4H. Instead of having the attitude of what’s
in it for me, try adopting the attitude of how can our family make 4H even
better. If you are wondering how, the following are suggestions. They fall in
line with some of our goals for this year as well, which we will also spell
out.
Your family can make 4H better by attending meetings
regularly, as a family. Granted, that isn’t always possible, but at least one parent
in attendance with their child(ren) is really a must. Kids don’t usually know
every facet of mom and dad’s calendar. Much of the club event planning goes on
at club meetings, so in order to make our club better, try not to miss many
meetings.
Be prepared. I think that is the Boy Scout motto, but is a
great one for any club striving to be successful. If your child is an officer
and has specific jobs at the meetings and needs some help preparing for a
meeting, whether it’s a treasurer that needs to know the account balance, or a
game leader looking for a new game, help your child be prepared. It’s a great
confidence builder and helps them interact with more confidence within the
group. This is not to say, that you should do it for them, but guide them as
you would with other aspects of their lives, based on their age level and
ability.
As an adult volunteer in 4H you are asked to do a variety of
things. One of them may be to lead a project. If you feel confident leading
one, please volunteer to do so. Chances are if your child is in the project,
you may be asked. So consider that, when helping your child choose which
projects they would like to participate in. If you aren’t confident that you
can lead or find help in leading, or just won’t get to planning out and
conducting the meetings, please don’t volunteer, as that is frustrating to the
children (and their parents) enrolled. As a project leader, please plan to have
your first meeting within the first three months of the 4H year. Visit with
members and their parents about your goals and their own for following though
the project to completion. You may find that you have parents more than willing
to help with the work load of teaching the children how to complete their
chosen projects, or if you learn that you will be doing most of the leading
yourself and feel like you need a little assistance, you still have time to
seek that out. Waiting until the weeks prior to the fair, puts un-due pressure
on the members and families. Projects really ought to be completed about the
time school gets out for the summer. That way, members have time to practice
the skills learned and add finishing touches to their projects.
Throughout the year, families will be asked to volunteer at
club events. Some of those are the fall ‘Deer Breakfast’ that is a club
fundraising activity. The ‘Soup Supper’ is a county fundraiser. Other events
might be holiday gatherings (Halloween, Christmas, Valentines) that are social
activities. At the end of the 4H year, fair time, there are several volunteer
activities that are asked for from families. These can be great life skill
teaching opportunities for your children. Whether its cleaning the tables at
the deer breakfast, baking cookies for the Valentines party, these are the
things your child will remember about 4H. I know those are the things I
remember about 4H.
Keeping good records are another great life skill that you
can learn in 4H. If you have attended a project meeting, reporting back to the
club helps a child in many ways. It gives them an opportunity to speak in front
of the group. Every time they do that, it gets easier, until public speaking is
something that they are totally comfortable with hopefully. It also helps them
gain confidence, in sharing what new skill they have acquired. As the children
move into leadership roles within the club, keeping meeting notes will be
essential. If they are a club secretary, it’s part of their job. If they are
the club representative on county committees, it makes reporting back to the club
much simpler, etc.
A very big part of 4H is learning by doing. Kids gain these
skills and one of the best ways to show others is through demonstrations. In
the past years, our club hasn’t made sure that kids are participating in the
demonstration portion of being a ‘member in good standing’ and one of our goals
for this year, is to truly be sure kids are doing this. As the parent, guiding
and supporting your child in 4H, talk with them about possible demonstrations
that they could share at a meeting on skills they have learned. This could be
current projects or ones from the past year, especially if you are considering
doing your demonstration in the first few months, when new projects are just
getting started.
Members in good standing are children who have checked off
all the boxes. They have attended over 50% of club meetings, participated in
the club and county activities. Members have learned new skills in the
attendance of 6 hours of project meeting time for each project enrolled. We
have been a little lax on this and signed off on several members, who truly
weren’t in good standing. One of this year goals, is to take better records as
a club, have project leaders who are leading the required number of hours,
members who are attending the meetings and families that are volunteering for
activities.
4H is what you make of it. If you are okay with teaching
your child that scraping by on the bare minimum of effort is okay, that’s fine.
But as a club, we are raising the bar and hoping that making the member
accountable will be a positive influence on the lives of the members. You get
out of it, what you put into it. In an effort to make sure that all are
accounted for properly, there will be close scrutiny of the attendance log and
project meeting reports. If members (or the family) aren’t willing to strive to
accomplish these goals, they won’t be allowed to participate in the fair
events, from building exhibit to livestock shows.
Leaders are busy people, they are doing all that your family
is doing in 4H PLUS, they are keeping track of the entire club participation
and working with other county committees, the extension agent and more. We have
set up several ways for your family to know what is going on at the club level.
At the beginning of each year, when you fill out enrollment forms, we glean
from the forms, your contact information. That is used in several forms, to
contact you about events. But this is a two way street, if you haven’t attended
at meeting, please make sure to contact leaders about information, you have
missed.
Ways we will use to communicate with you this year. Phones
(land lines or cell phones) either via text message or phone call. Emails (make
sure you share one that you regularly have access to) Facebook, if you aren’t Facebook
friends with others within the club already, you should consider following our
F&L Hustler Facebook page. We have established a club email, which
is…………most messages will come from this email. Tied to this as well, will be
shared Google photos (of club activities) and documents (things like agendas,
sign ups and the secretary’s book will be shared. If you don’t know how to use
google docs, ask your child, they use them at school all the time and they know
how) and a club blog. (will include a version of meeting minutes, agendas and
announcements)If none of these are reliable forms of communication to and from
your family, please make sure that leaders know what will work for you.
We are not trying to make anything hard for anyone. Our
first and foremost goal in 4H, is to work together as a 4H family and raise the
next generation of responsible, community minded and well-rounded young people.
We hope that we have put into place several tools into the hands of our club
family members to make that an easier task.
