Get Creative with 4-H and the Library!

Summer is one of the best times of year for 4-H. We are busy trying to meet as many youth as we can and tell them about 4-H and some of the things we offer. One way we do that is by partnering with the library and helping out with their weekly story time at all eight public library branches in Robeson County.
Our first stop this year, the Pembroke and Lumberton libraries. We worked with more than 100 youth who ranged in age from 3 to 15 on all sorts of neat things. Everyone had the opportunity to learn about 4-H and what the 4-H's stand for. They can also tell you what our logo is, what our official colors are and the secret about our logo so you know it is our official logo. They also got a really cool, official, 4-H sticker for their hard work learning about the 4-H's.
After that they worked on practicing a type of story telling. They learned that back before television and other modern conveniences people told stories to entertain each other. Often they would illustrate their stories with a piece of yarn or string that they turned into different shapes. As time has gone on many people who learned to do this as a child have forgotten as adults. So now it is up to the youth to learn and reteach the adults. The youth were ready for the task.
Each learned how to use their yarn to play a game of capture with someone and then how to let them loose again. They also learned how to make a witches broom and make a cup and saucer just by twisting and turning the yarn across their fingers between their hands. We even had a few string artists who were able to do Jacobs ladder and a few other really neat tricks.
The neatest trick of all was on that a day care leader from Pembroke showed us. She made our yarn magic yarn. We took our yarn piece and folded it three times, smoothed it out with our hands and put it in our pockets. Then it was disappearing yarn.
We will have the opportunity to meet with youth at other libraries over the next few weeks and we are looking forward to sharing this type of creative story telling with them also.