Junk Drawer Robotics Round 2!

Thursday and Friday of this week concluded our Junk Drawer Robotics Workshops! We had 6th-8th graders this week and made a variety of things. This week we made: movable hands, catapults, extended grabbers, cars that we raced, and drawbots. With lots of supplies we were able to make some awesome cars that raced very well! Everyone had fun and used their imaginations to come up with some awesome designs for everything we did! This week's workshop was one of our most successful workshops this summer! We are looking forward to our Food Challenge Workshop on Tuesday! 

Our group with our awesome racers!

Our cool hands that moved!

Constructing our cars to race!

Siblings!

All of our cool cars after the race!

We had fun! 

Junk Drawer Robotics Workshop

I spent yesterday morning and this morning teaching a Robotics Workshop for children. We ordered a kit from a 4-H Junk Drawer Robotics curriculum book and had lots of popsicle sticks, straws, marshmallows, rubber bands, and other fun materials to be super creative and make all kinds of STEM projects with. We made popsicle stick catapults, popsicle stick extended grabbers, bridges, and tons of other cool things! A big part of this workshop was to let the kids be creative and try to take something they envisioned and create it with materials. This was a success!

With the catapults we made, we discovered that heavier objects flew farther/better than light objects and we tried flinging ping pong balls, mini marshmallows, plastic Easter eggs, pieces of straws, and balls of duct tape to test our theory. We had a competition to see whose catapult could throw things the farthest, but it was pretty much the same.

Everyone used their imaginations and we used a lot of creativity over our 6 hour workshop! 

4-H Camp: Sun, Mosquitoes, and 209 People Having Fun

We made it back from Holiday Lake with all of our luggage, supplies, and campers! We had a successful week, and although we had some rain interrupt some of our afternoon activities, we had fun! Indoor campfire was not quite the same as having campfire outside, but we made sure the campers had as much time as possible outdoors! They played GauGau Ball, sand volleyball, 4 square, and many other games during free recreation times, and some of our evening activities included a scavenger hunt, a late night swim party (complete with glowsticks), and a Science Show!
There were classes to fit anyone's interests from canoeing to making things out of duct tape! Every morning was filled with fun class activities! Everyone had a good time!
The food at camp wasn't bad this year. Although the menu doesn't change very much from year to year, the campers get enough to eat and there is always salad bar and peanut butter and jelly bar (it's actually soy butter, but basically tastes the same as peanut butter) if someone would rather eat that. We had tacos, cafeteria square pizza, spaghetti, hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken tenders just to list a few of the meals...Not bad for camp food! It got us through the day/night, but I wasn't upset to come home and make some of my own food...:)
I only had about 18 mosquitoes by the end of the week and after a 4 hour nap Friday, I was a little more functional and I was good to go! I had only had about 20(+/-) hours of sleep the whole camp week.
Overall, camp went by pretty smoothly and was one of the least hot, least stressful years I've had ever! I hope everyone else had just as much fun as I did! :)

The whole camp group!

We've Got Everything Except the Kitchen Sink Packed Up for 4-H Camp!

This week, we have been packing for 4-H camp next week! We have packed just about everything anyone could possibly need for a week away from home! Craft supplies, posters, game supplies, extra toiletries, gift bags, thank you notes, envelopes, duct tape, snacks, extra sunscreen...we've got it all! If we forgot anything, I'll be quite surprised!
I have been working REALLY hard on all of our Minute to Win It Game supplies! We have 11 games planned, and I have worked really hard to find good games, gather up all the supplies, label each bag of supplies, write instructions, etc....to make sure the games are flawless! I sure hope the campers enjoy them since I worked so hard to make them perfect!
I also will be teaching a class at camp, so I have been coming up with ideas for the class, finding recipes and instructions for different things we will be doing in class. We have lots of fun activities we'll be doing at camp and it is going to be a busy week! I just hope everything goes as planned.
I have a lot of packing to do at home this weekend, and a busy weekend planned, so this should be interesting! Hopefully I won't forget anything! If I do...there is a Walmart nearby. :)
We've all been working hard to get everything ready for camp, I can't believe it's almost time!!

Wacky Science Workshop Fun!

Monday and Tuesday, we hosted a Wacky Science Workshop. We had three participants come in for the two day workshop and we did all kinds of fun science activities! We made homemade slime, built our own volcano and made it erupt, we made instant snow, watched egg shells disappear in vinegar, learned about density by layering liquids with different densities in a clear cup, and watched what happens when you put Mentos in diet Coke! We did other experiments and had fun seeing what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar together. On Monday, we had a surprise and NBC 29 News showed up to film us doing some science experiments and we got to be on the news! It was cool! Everyone had fun and learned a lot!

Check out one of our clips from the news! (They made two different ones and the second one was a little better, but this is the one they put up!)

http://www.nbc29.com/category/175568/video-landing-page?clipId=11657466&autostart=true

A Morning at the Lake...Holiday Lake, That Is...

We left the office this morning at 8:30 to drive down to the Holiday Lake 4-H Center and have our pre-camp meeting with the Nelson County Extension Agent and the summer staff leader down at camp. We went over our camp week schedule and plans, discussed events we need staff help with, and went over a few more details about our camp week before we took a little walk around the campground. Karrin and I knew what the campground is like, but we wanted to give the new intern, Courtney, a look around the camp at the cabins, dining hall, and other important areas. Everything went well and our short visit made us all excited for July 13th to get here so we can head to camp! We have a lot of packing and planning to do before then, but we'll get it done! :)