Nature Seekers 4 H January Meeting

For our first meeting of the new year, I chose money as the topic.  I had found a really cute felt piggy craft on Pinterest that I thought would be something the children would enjoy doing and then went into the 4 H office to find out what kind of information they had to do a program about money.  They had a great program called Money on the Bookshelf that uses different children's books to teach children about using money wisely.  They also had a game.  All I needed was a snack idea and I was all set.

Originally I had planned on having the children sew the felt piggies because we have never done any sewing projects in our club and that was one request I had for a meeting from one of the little girls.  But, I couldn't find any plastic needles that had a point that could go through felt and I have some pretty young children in there that I didn't want to hand regular sewing needles over to.  So instead of sewing the piggies I decided we would hot glue them.  I had hoped the children would be able to trace and cut them themselves, but felt is pretty hard to cut through without very sharp scissors and after testing it on Lily and her getting very frustrated I decided against that and spent a Saturday afternoon tracing and cutting all the little piggies.

At the meeting we usually do the craft last but I decided to do it first because  we were decorating the piggies with glitter glue and I wanted it to have a chance to dry.

Next we sat down and talked about what exactly money is.  We talked about the different items that have been used as money over the years.  I had a bag of play money that we passed around and talked about the value of each bill.  We talked about debit cards too.  Then we read the book Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday.

Then we played a game.  We used felt with circles with different amounts of money on it.  The children threw 4 velcro balls trying to get as much money as they could in 4 throws.  There are no pictures of this because my photographers were slacking off ;)

Then we talked about the differences between needs and wants and did a worksheet circling different needs and wants.

Next we did coin rubbings.

Last was snack time.  Lily, Emmie, and I made cupcakes with green icing that we were going to arrange in the shape of a dollar sign.  But, since the door got unlocked late I didn't take the time to do that.  The children didn't mind.

Next month we will be learning about Waterfowl.