Messy Monday

Messy Monday seemed like the perfect theme to kick off our last summer camp of 2017, 4-H Cloverbud Day Camp.  For those of you wondering, in the world of 4-H we refer to our 5-8 year olds as our cloverbuds.  Most of their competitions are non competitive and we are working hard to nurture them as they grow into our program.

When our campers came in this morning it was a little quiet.  As they settled into coloring, playing games, and learning a new card game (War) they were checking everyone and everything out.  Trust me, nothing escaped their eyes.  Of course one of our first acts was to sit down and let our campers work out our rules and consequences.  I must say this group was much tougher then our staff and volunteers would have been, but we hope their consequences won't be needed this week as we concentrate on having fun.

Now, we thought the best way to have fun on Messy Monday would be to make the ever popular slime.  Each camper got to chose the color of their slime and all of them helped each other make the concoction of glue, baking soda, food coloring, and contact solution.  They were excited to find out they would get to take their slime home.

After a brief snack break it was time to get back at the mess and make our own paper, from recycled paper.  We used our shredder, hand blenders, and some cool screens to make our own paper pulp and shape it.  We hope that it will be dry enough tomorrow to add seeds and make it seed paper that we can give as gifts.  Our campers had to work in pairs to make their paper and they did an awesome job.  It was a little gross but a whole lot of fun according to our campers.  We hope that their paper will be dry enough by tomorrow afternoon for them to take it home.

After a tasty pizza lunch it was time to work with Mr Magic Mack.  Mr. Mack Johnson is the Horticulture Extension Agent at the Cooperative Extension office.  He talked to us about dirt and soil.  We also played a game that taught us the difference between sand, silt, and clay.  After settling back in we learned about pollinators and met Buzzly the Bumble bee who took us outside to help pollinate some of the plants.  We harvested carrots, and a dried up sunflower.  We found out that inside sunflowers are sunflower seeds and we harvested them and planted them to take home.  It was really cool.  We then worked on making a home for some of our pollinators.  Using Honeycomb cereal, we made bee hives, and thumbprint bees to live in our hives.  They were very colorful creations. 

Before we knew it our first day was winding down and Mrs. T had us winding up.  She got us physically active and then we talked about the difference between grains. proteins, vegetables, and fruits.  When we got done it was time for our afternoon snack.  Today it was a whole grain, popcorn.  It was yummy.  We had barely eaten our first bite when our parents came to get us.  It was hard to believe that our first day was already behind us.  We cant wait to see what tomorrow has in store for us.