The Dog Days of Summer and County Fair

Hello all!  I hope the past few weeks have been going well.  I know I have been quite busy myself with multiple events and projects.  Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to attend 4-H Cloverbud Camp for the first time at North Central 4-H Camp.  I was very surprised at just how much energy these campers had.  Everything was a new experience for them in 4-H and they seemed to soak it all in like a sponge.  Needless to say, this was a very fun weekend where I was able to sally until I dropped, tie dye camp t-shirts, help with duct tape crafts, make tin can ice cream, and enjoy all that 4-H Camp has to offer to our Cloverbud campers.

After the close of Mercer County's camping season, I was able to travel to several different counties to help judge their county fair entries.  This was a fun opportunity for me to see different projects from garden vegetables to eclectic art, there was always something interesting to look at.

During the past week of my internship, I was very excited to help with the Super Star Chef Day Camp done through the Harrodsburg Housing Authority.  There were approximately 15-18 youth each day of the camp.  They learned cooking skills that ranged from proper sanitation measures and identifying basic cooking utensils to more advanced skills such as identifying different tastes, using proper cutting and cooking techniques, and even recipe components.  While most of the youth who attended were around age 8, I was extremely impressed at how well they behaved and how excited they were to learn new things.  I really enjoyed this day camp.  It was rewarding to see how much the youth learned in the three days that they attended classes.  All of them said they learned at least one new skill that they can take home to use in their own kitchens.  Also, a few youth tried foods they had never eaten before during this day camp that they really loved!  Overall, the camp was a huge success and the attendees all agreed that if it was held again next year, they would all participate again.  One of the most interesting observations I made while helping with this day camp was that most of the youth did not eat breakfast before coming to the camp.  This made them somewhat irritable, less focused, and they ate most of the demonstration food before they could even work with it.  This became a problem, so the next two days the facilitators cooked pancakes for the kids to eat.  The change from day one to day two was amazing.  They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and especially for children in school, this is so true!