October 2007
Great things going on this fall through our two Project GO pilot programs. We fixed up our little garden plot in Plainview that we had created in early June. Weeding and planting some additional perennials that were generously donated by a local nursery. We had special visits from 4-H staff who helped teach the kids how to use a compass and also how to use GPS units for geo-caching. The kids enjoyed using the small, hand-held computers to find the coordinates of objects hidden in the area.
To introduce the children to their own creativity, we walked to nearby forest areas in both communities where I explained to them the legend of the little people who live in harmony with nature. The kids were paired up and then set on an adventure to use natural objects from the forest to construct homes for the little people and fairies. It was great to see how focused they became and interesting to watch their engeneering and architecture skills.
Our service project this month was assisting with flood clean up at Whitewater State Park. We helped pick up chunks of asphalt that had washed away from the road. Once again, pairing the kids into small teams and having them work together to see what team could create the largest asphalt pile was interesting to observe. Although the task was simply to pile the asphalt, the children carefully stacked the debris and formed neat statues and structures. And as they explored the floodplain forest in search of the asphalt pieces, they discovered neat rocks, mushrooms, animal tracks and many other natural suprises.
