The Case for More Life Skills 4-H Clubs

A recent article published in Mother Jones calls for a return of “Home Economics” to classrooms across the country, for both genders of students. The authors argue that,

“Public school systems are so strapped that they’re already slashing equally worthy classes like art, music, and PE. But producing generation upon generation of people who don’t know how to feed themselves healthily or manage their finances is generating massive, cascading societal costs…”

While this might be true, 4-H has an important role to play here. As an informal education, separate from public schools, we have the opportunity to fill some major gaps in knowledge, and some clubs are doing just that with “life skills” focused project areas.

I recently reviewed some club plans for a teen center and I was so excited to see these things listed on their program plan:

1. Making a meal plan
2. Making a shopping list
3. Shopping with coupons
4. Shopping comparisons
5. Preparing for a hurricane
6. Folding laundry
7. Ironing laundry
8. Sewing on a button
9. Hemming a pair of pants
10. Basic car maintenance
11. Manners for special occasions
12. Using public transportation
13. Using household cleaners and organizing your house
14. Tools for yard work
15. Personal safety-Being Aware when you are out

These are true life skills, that while some may think they are obvious, I can assure you, middle school and high school students we are working with are desperate for these skills and in fact LOVE learning them with their friends.

When offered in combination with other clubs such as cooking, sewing, and community service, we can begin to really shape young people into productive and responsible adults. So I would encourage all middle school and teen centers to consider offering a “life skills” style club this year.

Capturing Your 4-H Club in Photos

Capturing good photos is all about timing, focus and letting kids be themselves 🙂

As our work with youth becomes ever more connected to outcomes and funding, it is important to think about how best to showcase what it is we do with kids and why it’s important.  Photos are indeed worth a thousand words- if they are the right photos! Recently as we were trying to pull together information for our end of year reports, it became clear that there are some challenges to getting good photos. Here are five things that DON’T work very well:

1. Photos taken at greater than 5 or 6 feet. Big group shots are needed sometimes, but most times for documentation photos you don’t want to be 10 or 15 feet away from your subjects. It becomes hard to tell what is going on and when reproduced in reports, the photos are often only about 2 inches square.
2. Photos pasted onto PowerPoint slides or into a PDF with graphics and text. Once you alter the photo and put it into a program like this, we can’t extract the picture to use in a report. And again, the photo might be reproduced much smaller than the original.
3. Photos with fancy filters. Instagram and your cell phone’s camera settings might look cool on Facebook, but sepia tones or “vintage look” photos are not good for corporate reports that get sent to funding agencies.
4. Blurry, out of focus or distorted photos. This seems obvious, but we get a lot of these!
5. Cell phone pics with less than 10 megapixel resolution. Most smart phones now are taking pretty good photos, and when emailed (not uploaded or texted) the photos maintain quality. But if you have an older phone or you know it doesn’t take great pictures, please use a regular camera.

Here are some examples of things that DO work really well, and we want to see more of!

1. Close up action shots, with 4-H logos! 4-H is Learn by Doing- kids should be doing something in the photos!
2. Hi-resolution .jpeg or .gif files emailed to us. For big batches, you can send to our .gmail account- 4hleaders AT gmail.com.
3. Bright, clear photos where the action is featured and is obvious what is going on.

Hope this helps you all get some good photos this year. Also, share these tips with your photography club members or youth officers, so when they are in charge of getting the pictures, they can be successful.

Some of our favorite shots from the past few years:

This is great example of why we need photos in their “raw” state. This one can be cropped to draw us in closer to the boy getting a ribbon, but if part of another file, this photo would be unusable.

 

The aprons are a nice touch in these cooking club shots, and kids are busy doing things. And again, we can crop this one to make it really stand out when printed smaller.

Bright, clear colors, and 4-H logos. The kids are not perfectly posed, making this a great action shot.

 

A photo of youth taking photos! Brilliant! Bright colors and angle is nice.

Though they are not wearing 4-H gear, this is a great example of an action shot with just a few youth.

Year Round Growing! Tips for Starting from Seed

Year Round Growing! Tips for Starting from Seed.

Visit The Green Box Garden for tips on Fall gardening, including starting from seeds! There’s a lot of 4-H Gardening clubs this year, so if you are new to gardening, let us help you be successful! Aloha!