Summer Plans

Hi everyone,

Well, it seems the summer has snuck up on us! I hope everyone's end of the school year went well. We had a blast at our end-of-year lake party (if you weren't able to make it - contact me, I have some stuff for you more than likely).

Summer Plans
I wanted to see what people wanted to do over the summer with 4-H. I was thinking of doing 2-3 field trips possibly related to butterfly gardening. We'll start meeting regularly again in September, but we'll probably have a parents meeting in late August to kick off the 4-H year.

Library Butterfly Garden
We're also going to be working on collecting plants for our Tower Road library garden and we'll have at least one work/service day to install the plants. I'm working with the library to make sure we don't miss anything. I've attached the plant list. I work with a landscape designer and she came up with a list of plants and a design that would work for our library garden.

Parent Volunteer Opportunities
I have some specific parent volunteer opportunities that I could really use some help with. Please let me know if you're interested. We really need some help to make this coming year awesome!

Field Trip Organizer - contact trip site, relay information to club, set times and dates
--Field Trip #1 Organizer - Great Butterfly House in Earleton - possible trip dates end of June or early July
--Field Trip #2 Organizer - Butterfly Rainforest - possible trip dates in late July or early August
--Field Trip #3 Organizer - Payne's Prairie - sometime this fall

Butterfly Garden Helpers
--Library Plant Collector - take the lead on collecting the plants for the garden either by contacting nurseries or assigning plants/nurseries to families
--Arbor Builders - we've got a couple of arbors in the garden plan and we'll need some handy people to help show the kids how to build them - they can be out of lumber, bamboo, or a variety of other materials

Fall Helpers
--Fall Snack Coordinator - I'd like to get a parent to coordinate snacks for the fall
--Cloverbud Helper - we're going to have a LOT of Cloverbuds this upcoming year (5-7 year olds) and some tag alongs (younger than 5). I really need some help with planning activities and collecting meeting items for them.
--Livestock Judging Coach - last spring, we had some interest from our older members in forming a livestock judging team. If they're still interested, we'll need to get a couple of coaches to help out with training them.
--Project Leaders - help with a specific project activity (ex. vegetable gardening), helping kids carry out activities, identifying guest speakers - if you're interested in a specific project area, let me know and I can tell you more about it. This past year, we mainly focused on gardening and swine. We're willing to expand that if we have the project leaders to help with it. Project leaders can also have sub-meetings to really get into content with interested members. For example, some of the members have been interested in crocheting - we might meet every couple months just with the crocheters to go over new techniques and projects.

We just finished a great year and we're really looking forward to the upcoming year. Parents - please let me know if you're interested in serving as a volunteer. Volunteers are the heart of 4-H and the program wouldn't happen without them. We really want to make this coming year a great year for everyone, but we'll need your help to do that. If you'd like to talk more about what the different volunteer positions, call me and I can give you more info.