4 H Summer Science Workshop

Tuesday was the last of the 4 H summer workshops for this year.  We had a science workshop with an agricultural theme.  The children were able to participate in a variety of activities, and Nicholas was in charge of one of the experiments.

It was a well attended event.  We had 26 children plus teen helpers and a few adults.  The first activity was to make Soil Sammies.  My children have done this activity before but it has been awhile and it's one that can be repeated and it is still fun.

Next we divided the children into two groups and the older group went to the kitchen to do an activity with bioplastics.  We split the younger group into 3 smaller groups to rotate through three different stations: color changing milk, dancing raisins, and seed ID.  The coloring changing milk is a really cool experiment if you have never done it before and worth doing again if you have.  Alex actually introduced the experiment to 4 H a few years ago for his science demonstration (we found it on a really cool science DVD) so my children have done it many times.

Dancing raisins is another one that we have done before at our club 4 H meeting but it is another that can be done multiple times and still be interesting.

The next was seed ID.  For the younger children we had them work as a group, when it came time for the older children they worked on their own worksheets, but the ID was to make the seed to the plant it came from.  There were 15 different seeds in jars for the children to look at.  It was a bit challenging and even the teens and the adults didn't know all of the answers, but it was fun.

The younger group then rotated into the kitchen to do the bioplastics activity and the older group went through the other 3 stations.

The younger children got done first so we played some games like hokey pokey and duck duck goose.

Then we went over all of the answers to the Seed ID.

The last activity was a 5 senses activity.  The children were given a worksheet with a list of foods and questions about what it looked like, how it smelled, if it had a sound, what it felt like, and how it tasted,  They were given a blindfold to put on.  The first thing they had to do was smell it, then touch it, taste it, listen to sound it made, and at last look at it.  It was a fun activity!

Another fun and educational 4 H workshop!  I can't believe that summer is almost over!