Robeson County 4-H

    Campers woke up this morning in the groove and ready to  roll with the schedule of events.  The temperatures are supposed to be in the upper 90"s today and conselors are making sure everyone has a water bottle and stays hydrated during the day (so that also means lots of bathroom breaks built into the day's events.   After geetting up and doing cabin chores our campers headed to breakfast where they enjoyed french toast, sausage, and the fresh fruit bar.  There is nothing like starting the day with fuel to make sure you get through all the adventures that lay ahead.   After flag raising our campers headed out on their great adventures.  For our younger campers (head, heart, hands and health) they went for traditional activities this morning and headed out to the pool (got to love to play in the water), archery, canoeing, and fishing (and yes the fish were biting).  Our older youth (Earth and Sun groups) headed up to the High Ropes course ...

    Its amazing what a good night's sleep will do for your attitude.  Our campers woke up with the birds today and either started cleaning up their cabins or headed to breakfast.  Breakfast this morning was a huge hit.  The campers had th option of scrambled eggs, bacon, bagels, fruit bar and more.  The temperature today was a little warmer but still pleasant outside for all of our activities.  After flag raising our youngest campers headed off for canoeing and the swimming while other made their way to the archery field and crafts.  Our Sun group got the chance to go fishing and the fish were biting today while the adventurer and trekker groups headed to high ropes to practice important skills before their outdoor adventures later this week.  In the second round groups switched between these activities and Yoga/meditation time was added in.  This activity allows youth a chance to rest in air conditioning and have a moment to recover bef...

  Our campers woke up this morning to an overcast sky and temperatures in the upper 70's.  You could not ask for more perfect weather for the first day of camp.  This morning our youngest campers got up and headed to breakfast while the oldest one made beds, cleaned cubbies and worked on cabin chores.  Things like emptying the trash, sweeping the floor, and cleaning bathrooms are all on the list and a little more.  At stake are the golden faucet, silver toilet seat, and bronze faucet.  The most coveted daily awards offered for the cleanest cabins.   Breakfast today consisted of pancakes, turkey sausage, and of course we have cereal and fresh fruit available everyday.  We eat in shifts at camp with the youngest campers eating first and then heading back to their cabins to get ready for the cleanest cabin competition while the older youth make their way to the dinning hall for breakfast.  Flag raising kicks off the activities for the day. ...

It's our Favorite time of year!  Overnight camp week and this year we are excited to be headed back to BJP with some of our favorite counties.  We started our day meeting at the NC Cooperative Extension, Robeson County Center office to meet all of our adults, our new friends from Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland, Pender, and Robeson Counties.  Then after a brief schedule of events we boarded our luxury Academy bus to head to camp.    After saying goodbye to our loved ones our first stop was for lunch.  We have to give a very warm thank you to our friends at Golden Corral in Asheboro where we stopped to eat.  There is something for everyone there and we are appreciative of all the choices and good food.  We were also appreciative of our server, Ms. Sandra who looked after our entire crowd.  We sure do appreciate her.    After a good meal we got back on the bud and headed to camp.  We were so excited to climb the hills to camp t...

    It's that week of Summer Fun....It's Biotech Day Camp!  For those not familiar with this very populr camp we do all things science while travelling in a 15 passenger van.  Ever since the beginning we have partnered with Hoke Couty on this scientific travelling scientific adventure and this year was no different.  Our first stop after picking up our counterparts in Raeford was Aloha Zoo.  This is a small zoo with a variety of animals and offers a safari ride so campers could actually feed the animals as they learned about wildebeests, Ostriches, Emus, and so many more.  Not only were they able to see up close and personal with animals they are not used to seeing, they learned interesting facts about these animals and how they are cared for.  One of their favorite animals was the ring tailed lemurs.  Which will go well with our field trip tomorrow (stay tuned).  All in all we worked up an appetitie at the zoo so it was time to hit the ...

    Coding is more than our campers realized.  However according to them they are extactic to learn about all areas of it.  Today was no exception as we extended our coding knowledge on this the last day of 4-H Coding Day Camp.   We started the day with everyone having a little time to learn how to fly our new indoor drones and how to work our new art robot Artie.  Now these many not seem like things you need to learn to code but you would be amazed and the thought that has to go into each of these two fun hands on learning opportunities.   With the drones we learned our challenges (a battery life of about 7 minutes).  We learned how to fly them, take off, land, flip them and calibrate them each time we switched batteries.  Some of our pilots got so good they could land them on someone's hand.  It was amazing. With Artie not only did our youth use their skills from Scratch coding but they had to use geometry to figure out how to nav...

   Our campers have figured out that we like field trips.  We like them because they can meet the experts, and do things with real world applications.  That makes a bigger impression and ah-ha moments for them.  Today we are doing something new and different, which makes sense since this camp is something new and different.    We travelled to Robeson Community College (RCC) today to meet Mr. William Stubbs who is in charge of the Gaming and Simulator program.   Our youth learned some cool applications to coding and that when they are in high school they can take classes to learn more and create some practical applications.  They also learned more about the design, animation, and production of these types of applications.  The highlight of the trip, besides learning about careers in coding, was having the chance to play a video game developed by one of the students.  Our youth were again inspired by our host to pursue and education i...

    Day three for our Coding Day Camp crowd and we were excited to apply coding to all aspects of our lives.  We started the day with a little team building and strategizing as we played a rather fun and silly game known as "Would you Rather."  After warming up we jumped into some coding fun.   Today we learned the difference between engineering, electronics,  and data by working with a couple of different things.  The game operation showed our youth the difference between data and engineering and also let them know that data and coding don't have to be electronically done.  Sometimes cards and written instructions can provide that rather than technology.   Using our snap circuit kit and our ipad to run teh coding program our youth learned about electronics and what they need to engineer to make things work and how coding enhances those things.  With this fun too our youth were able to build a circuit for power and then operate the compo...

    Today our 4-H Coding Day Campers ventured out into the world to see what the future might hold for some cool coding kids.      Our first stop what to see John Allen and his robotics team at Robeson Community College-Early College program.  Our youth learned about engineering, planning, and coding when it comes to robotics.  Their favorite part was working with the students.  They said the students were so nice, patient with them, and helped them learn so much.  Then it was time to see the main attraction.  The competition robot that they team built and takes to competitions and educational events to allow people to learn more about robotics.  Our youth got to see how it was put together and how it works.  But their favorite part was either handling the controls or trying to catch the rings that the robot shoots out around their necks.  The robot was much bigger and heavier than our youth anticipated and the code for it...

    Lots of questions around this brand new 4-H STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Art, and Math) camp.  Hopefully by the end of the week we will have lots of answers.  For those of you wondering what coding really is, coding in today's world is a series of instructions written for computers to execute tasks.  However as we will learn during this week coding is part of our everyday lives and goes back long before the days of computers.   To get the day started we did introductions and a little team building for this shy group of 4-H campers.  We know by the end of the week they will all be best of friends but this week is all about communication in a varity of ways so we thought we would break the ice in fun ways.   It wasn't long before we got down to business.  Some experts say the first coding goes back to the 1830's when the telegraph and Morse Code was created.  Morse code was actually created from a series of patter...