Why 4-H...

Team Clover 4-H Club, the beginning of fun!

It has been a first half of our new 4-H club the Hubby and I formed.  If you are wondering why with out already busy lives we took on a 4-H club with over 10 members all under the age of 10, well all I can say is there are 3 very great reasons.  The Oldest Daughter, the Youngest Daughter and the Big Guy.  We wanted them to have the joy of being with friends, doing good for others and learning life skills too.
For a few years I was the Youngest Daghter's Girl Scout leader and I can say I'm quite happy to have moved from that on to something more fitting to the life and values I want my kids to know.  Don't get me wrong GScouts is a great program and what it stand for it great but as a GScout leader it seemed as I was always competing with all the other leaders to do things rather then working together with them.  In my own opinion it really seemed as though our school's Council itself didn't want other leaders to do or say anything they didn't' approve of.  Obviously that is just not the kind of club I wanted to be a leader of or have my kids in and my kids actually didn't want it either as one of them dropped out of her club of "no fun" as she put it and the daughter whose club I was the leader of actually asked me not to do it again.....

.....Problem solved with the formation of Team Clover 4-H Club.  I knew I wanted my kids to be involved in things around the community and be able to do things with their friends so we move on to a club that works best for our family.  That came in the form of a 4-H club as even the Big Guy could be a member of this club rather then having to be excluded from the stuff I did with the GScouts.   I had some limited knowledge of 4-H as I had volunteered at a club my niece was a member of 10yrs ago and knew that it wasn't all just "farming" as many people think.  I also knew that my kids would fit better into a club where they could have fun, do what works for them and be themselves rather then trained into cookies selling snobs and yes I said it, sorry seems that's all GS stands for now days.  
We did not have enough kids to form our own club so we opened up the club to not only friend of our kids but to our local community and ended up with 16 original members, WOW!  We weren't expecting such a response but we took them all on.  We also added another leader to help us out with such a large club.  She is the mother of one of the kids friends and I have basically known her my whole life.  Also she was a member of a 4-H club when she was younger so it just seemed to work for all of us.  Unfortunately it ended up being a bit more then a few members bargained for and we are down to 13 members but still that is a large club for such a small town and considering I only had 5 GScouts when I was the leader of that club.  We have had a blast this year and honestly I have not heard one member complaining so I guess we must be doing a good job finding fun ways for them to learn important life skills

So far this year we have learned a lot about Wild Birds, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Sewing, we have had fund raisers, had members go out on their own to other local 4-H functions and have almost completed our Community Service project.  Its been a blast and there is still tons of time for more fun including the local County Fair, Summer projects, Pheasant raising and the list goes on....

Do I think we made the right decision, Absolutely!  I had to drag the girls to Girls Scouts functions and now they are nagging for when the next 4-H meeting is going to be.