A New Day A New Creation

  The last week of Summer Fun belongs to our youngest ones.  Not that I am trying to go Suessian on you but rhyming sort of comes naturally after spending the day with our 5-8 year old Cloverbuds.  We changed things up a little this year.  Each day has a theme for this camp and our first day was one that lead to creativity, Arts and Crafts day.
  Thanks to the help of 4-H Volunteer Jessica Drake this week we have a whole host of things going on that will make our youngest members, happy.  We started the day getting to know each other and playing a few games.  Then we got ready to have some fun, and perhaps make a mess. Our first project took a little patience and one we would work on all day.  We painted the backgrounds of a canvas in a single color.  This would serve as our backdrop to our nature prints.  We'll explain as we go forward.
  While we were being patient waiting for that to dry (and after cleaning ourselves up) we moved on to reusing items.  In this case we reused socks to make socktopuses.  While we were stuffing our socks we learned all about octopuses and the eight legs that they have.  Ours are a much cuddlier version of the creatures that also have eight legs, google eyes and lots of character.
  Before lunch we made one more really cool thing.  We turned the usual into the unusual.  By using really big paperclips and ribbon we made our own personalize bookmarks.  We just picked the different ribbon or ribbons we wanted then looped it through one end so it would stay tied.  Now we have our own personalized bookmark that we made ourselves.
  Mrs Margaret came and made us an awesome lunch!  She said she would come back all week just to cook for us and she makes really yummy food.
  After lunch we had a little more work to do while our works of art finished drying.  We had the chance to take plastic pony beads and make big and little sun catchers   I know it sounds sort of fishy and fishing line is used to hang these one of a kind pieces but this was cool.  We took our favorite colors an put them in aluminum pans of different sizes.  We made sure there was only a single layer of beads in each of our trays then Miss Shea Ann and Mrs. Jessica baked them in the oven.  The beads melted (we got to go check it out) when it came out the plastic discs popped right out and we had a really cool multi-colored sun catcher to take home with us.
  When we got done with that fun we split into two groups.  Miss Shea Ann and our teen volunteer Chris Bullard took some of us outside with our boards and we collected flowers, leaves, twigs, etc outside and got ready to get creative.  Miss Shea Ann sprayed our canvas with adhesive spray and we played our items creatively on our canvas.  Then we pick gold or silver spray paint.  She spray painted our entire canvas (sticks, leaves, flowers, and all) and left it outside in the sun to dry.
  The group inside got the chance to work with Mrs. Jessica on two items.  Our first was a wood cut out that had its own markers.  We each got to pick one and color it in to take home.  When we got done with that we had the chance to make button bracelets with ribbon and buttons.  It was a really cool project that a lot of us wore home to show our parents.
  When we got done with each of our leaders we switched places and got to do the other stuff.  Then it was time for Mrs. Tamika.  She works for the Expanded Foods and Nutrition Education Program or EFNEP.  She is going to come in all week and talk with us about different healthy foods we can eat and teach us how to make our own snacks.  Today we made apple carousels with apples, animal crackers and peanut butter.  They were really awesome, and tasted good too.
  Tomorrow is Science Day.  We think we might get to make something explode!  How much fun would that be?