Posted in On Our Journey

Except for the ribbons, which haven't been awarded yet, we've successfully finished our first year of 4-H.  

When I was growing up, I don't think there was anything to do with 4-H until you'd completed 3rd grade.  Sometime, in the intervening 30 years since I started, they added two "pre-4-H" levels - Cloverbuds (ages 3-6), and Mini (completed 1st and 2nd grades).   For these levels, everyone gets a participation ribbon and that's about it.

Regular 4-H starts the year you are in 3rd grade - with the fair as a culminating event happening the summer *after* your 3rd grade year.  This is when there are blue/red/white ribbons, with Champions, etc. and State Fair entries.

The activities and requirements for any given subject are set by each individual county's extension office.  They often borrow information, or even whole manuals, from other counties, but it's very locally run.

I was a "10 year" 4Her - meaning I participated in 4H for all of the years one could participate.  So my perspective, though changed, is based upon ample experience.

Now, I realize it's quite easy to talk about the "good old days" when one was younger.  So there may need to be a grain of salt taken with this.

What I enjoyed about it was that I was given enough information to begin learning about a topic *on my own* at whatever level I could achileve.  I loved this.  Being a product of the public school system, it was liberating and I really did learn a lot. 

My most memorable, and overall most useful, project was a Veterinary Science poster on genetics. 

Don't ask me where, in the mid-80s, I found anything written about genetics that was even remotely written at a lay-person's level.  But, I must have, because when I got to college-level biology, I ended up tutoring a portion of my class on the same topics I'd researched two years previously. 

However, I'm guessing that my impressions will change with dd's experience.   My first clue is when we found it difficult to tear ourselves away from our regular studies and activities to complete the 4H projects. 

Obviously, in Mini-4H, the level can't be too difficult.  The topics are geared toward 1st and 2nd graders. 

But, as any observant homeschool parent can tell you, there's a big difference between a student who is in 1st grade and one who is going into 3rd grade.

Making a model rocket from recycled materials seems a bit "slow" as a space project to a student who has created a "working" rocket - even if the "fuel" was only seltzer tablets! 

I guess being a homeschooling parent, I'm less likely to be impressed by "fluff" masquerading as "learning."  But when the child complains...you know it's a problem!

Honestly, I expected more because I kept hearing (from non-homeschoolers) how "great" 4H is for "supplementing homeschooling." 

I think "supplementing homeschooling" is an oxymoron, isn't it?

All I can hope is that the next level of 4H has more to offer than these pre-levels. 

But I fear that the requirements might be lower for the projects than they were when I was involved and doing them 25-ish years ago, in an overall sense.  I will definitely take that into consideration as we move forward into the more complete 4H program.

When I think about what I most enjoyed about 4H - the self-directed learning - I realize that dd is going to get that anyway through homeschooling.

Which isn't to say that 4H, even our local program, has nothing to offer.  But it's a reminder that even something positive that still exists from our own childhood may not require the attention, or level of participation, from our homeschooled children that we once would have given it ourselves.

Activities, like books, need to be chosen wisely, no matter how nostalgic we might feel otherwise.