The Great New York State Fair!

Where has August gone? We've been camping again for a week and back home. We're trying to gear up for our homeschool co-op which begins in another couple weeks- and that has required some of my time along with the rest of our committee.

Today we are off to the New York State Fair for the day. We have these three exhibits up at the fair and maybe we can see how they've done. Usually we just send our things and wait to see how it went when we pick them up, but this year E13 is doing his falconry presentation at the State Fair.

Conversion- the Missionaries of the Middle Ages game!

The famous 4-H graphic t-shirt

R's knit hat made with a Knifty Knitter loom

He started with this talk back in March and made it to the district level where he was selected to present again at State Fair. His talk is entitled, "The Art of Falconry" and he gives an overview of the history of the sport and how to become a licensed falconer.

We'll report back later today. Thanks for reading!

4-H Word Cloud Textile Art

About a month ago I purchased the Hearts and Trees Volume 2 Magazine and we've been enjoying it here and there as we've had time before and after our move. R12's favorite activity has been the word cloud. While she was playing around with it, she made a 4-H clover leaf and put in it all the words she could think of that had to do with her 4-H experience. I encouraged her to take a look on our local cooperative extension website to explore other 4-H events and ideas and she came up with this great little word cloud in just the right color. She decided it would look terrific on a tshirt. Here's a look at how R12 made the shirt.

After she made the word cloud she had to reverse the image in order to iron it on a shirt- we have practice at this from making the FLL tshirts.

Iron is ready- ok it's not my iron. Ours has not turned up at the new house. I didn't pack it...Dan did. When you iron on the shirts you can't use an ironing board. Interesting, huh?

She trimmed around the edges of the clover leaf and you can see we printed it reversed so it will turn out right on the shirt.

I gave a hand in the ironing- she didn't want to take any chances on messing it up!

Ready for lift off!

The finished product. Isn't that cool?

We had a feeling this one would do well and look! A blue ribbon!

Even better look at this! Later on we saw that it was chosen to go to State Fair! Congratulations R!

I encourage you to check out Amanda's Hearts and Trees Volume 2 Magazine. The tag line says- Encouraging Art. Handicrafts, and Nature Study. We had a fun time with the first volume as well and I'll be sharing more about the magazines really soon.

I just wanted to share with you some good news from the 4-H Fair and there's more to come. E13 has another game on the way to the Great NY State Fair. Stay tuned!

4-H Pie Bee

The weekend before Thanksgiving we joined with our new 4-H group to have a Pie Bee. We all worked to make about 20 pies for a local Loaves and Fishes. We hope their clients enjoyed these pies. I thought about all the different shapes of apples they would get to enjoy!

The absolute highlight of this meeting for J6 was cutting the apples. Hands down.

Mixing ingredients...some of us are one handed adventurers.

Each child got a ball of dough to roll out. The kids had a great time.

Since R11 had a broken arm, she partnered up with I9 and together they made two pies. Sweet stuff!

What happened to the days when cameras took a picture when you pushed the button- the first time?

J6's finished pie!

We've spent the last several years as independent 4-Hers and we are trying out a new club in our own county (previously we participated in the county next door for various reasons). They are very active so that's exciting. Each month they do a meeting with a short business portion and a community service project. Then there are other activities to sign up for throughout the month if you choose to do so. They have a lot going on. We'll see how it goes, but I do have to admit that the independent status fits much better with our lifestyle. I'll keep you posted.

Sunflower Garden Math

Yesterday we headed out to the sunflower garden to record the height of our sunflowers in addition to the diameter of the flower heads. I had the kids make a data chart based on the information we wanted to collect and we headed outdoors.

The final result- they have all bloomed at this point.

The Soraya variety

The Mammoth Grey Stripes win the tall prize. These are the ones with the sunflower seeds we eat.

The Moulan Rouge did not fare well in all the rain we've had from hurricanes and tropical storms. I guess the roots were not deep enough to support the plant in the poor weather and with the saturated ground.

Measuring the diameter of the flower- seed head and petals

Our tallest plant is 8 feet tall.

We lost one Moulan Rouge plant within the very first week to...something. We replanted the following week with what we thought was the Autumn Variety. Surprise! It was really the Pro-Cut Lemon.

This was a great math activity for J6- just writing numbers and recording data. The older kids will be doing some conversions from inches to feet. We use the portable drawing boards from Discount School Supply.

Honeybee visitors! How exciting! Go bees go!

More height measurments

Rll's data and some petals from the ground- she is taking a Flower Pressing class at Co-op this semester. More on this later.

Our sunflower garden was a 4-H project. In fact, we are members of the Heritage Garden Club and last spring we went to a "training" on growing our seeds. The seeds were given to us as part of the group and we even won a copy of the Sunflower Book. Any day now, the 4-H educators will be coming out to measure our sunflowers. We didn't plant any giants this year (because we planted so late and did imagine with its growing season that it would be tall enough before the first frost), but the growing season wasn't super kind this year and word on the street is that a lot of other families had trouble with critters and their gardens did not do too well. So, I guess we have a shot at the tallest plant.

This was a very successful and enjoyable garden to grow! We are already planning next year's sunflower garden. I'd like to see which varieties the birds really enjoy. We are part of a pilot program with our local science center and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Part of our job is to add and element to our habitat that will help the birds.

4-H Project: Strawberry Muffins

R11 loves to cook and bake and she has decided to enter a baking item into the 4-H Fair this year. I was happy to help her out. I mean, after all, what's not to love about the results of her efforts? She found this recipe in one of her library booksale cookbooks from sometime this year- it's a kid's cook book.

fresh strawberries- 3/4 cup

Folding in the berries- had to give a lesson to R11 on what "folding in" means!

You put half the batter in the muffin cup then add a "surprise" of strawberry jam in the middle before adding more batter. This was a bit tricky, but she did it.

Finished Muffins! Mmmmm....

We've never entered anything into the baking section of the fair before, so this will be a learning experience for all of us. We've been busy at our house preparing for the fair and still have lots of work to do- we missed a week of preparation because of VBS  (I was the craft lady!), so today is the last day and we can get these items ready for the fair and deliver them tomorrow. I'll post again on what other sorts of things are going to fair this year. J5 will have a big year as a Cloverbud which he's very excited about. He also caught wind that he is in first grade now and that is BIG news here at our house!

4H: LEGO NXT

E12 did his 4H Public Presentation on how to build and program with the LEGO NXT kit. He did a fantastic job of showing the different components that come in a kit and he demonstrated how to program a robot he'd built. This year's season began in February and he progressed (along with R10) to the district level which was held this past Saturday.

His poster was pretty clean in design.

The robot- a design from one of his Mindstorms books

He went with double sided foam core board- the first year we used the tri-fold which folded up too much. These are  much nicer for the easel- a free tip for you!

A screen shot of the program he used to demonstrate the touch sensor on his robot. He projected the laptop image onto a screen and demonstrated how to use the drag and drop software to program the robot.

Both of the kids wanted to achieve district level this year and they both got there! R10, of course, was did her demonstration on How to Make a Drawstring Bag. I'm happy to report they both earned blue ribbons! Due to budget issues, there is no State Level competition this year which is frustrating for so many, but because they earned blue ribbons they can choose to do these presentations at the NY State Fair as a general exhibit.

Congratulations to all of our kids for a job very well done! They are already looking forward to next year.

4-H: Fizzy Science

Our 4H presentation season is all over! But I neglected to share some more story with you. This is J5's poster for his talk on "Fizzy Science". He did an amazing job of demonstrating what happens when you dissolve citric acid in water and add baking soda to it.

He said all the right things and at the end fielded questions. He was a pro! He's been watching the other kids to this for years and was delighted it was finally his turn as well. As a Cloverbud he did this just one time, but it's captured on video! I wonder what he'll do next year.

It's been a great season and I8 is already considering what he talk about next year- an illustrated talk on Daniel Boone is in the running although something on World War II is a close second at the moment. He has some time to work that out. In the meantime, I'll be sharing the results of the district round of talks for E12 and R10 soon! (need a few more pictures to make it right)

4-H Demonstration: Making a Drawstring Bag

R10 spent some time recently preparing for her 4-H Public Presentation which was on Making a Drawstring Bag. All of our kids participated in this event right on down to J5. They really enjoy this part of 4-H! All of them did demonstrations this year. R10 worked on this sewing demonstration.

She prepared her poster- this is the second side. I like her creative display.

Here she is practicing for me in her room- which leaves her facing the opposite direction than where she'll normally be oriented.

She attached several styles of bags not just the one she made. The green one is her finished product which she gave to the judge.

As she was practicing for her demo, she learned something new about her machine. If you hit the switch then the needle will stay down to make the turn without using the handwheel. So lovely!

All of the kids worked hard on their presentations and posters. Each of them prepared an outline and made sure they knew what they were doing each step of the way. R10 earned a blue and gold sticker for her demo on February 10th. She gets to move up to the county level and do the demo again in a few weeks. This is her third year doing public presentations and each year she's gone to county. She's hoping to make it to district this year. Good luck R10!

For those of you who are new to Blog, She Wrote, R10 has a sewing blog at Miss Bliss. Feel free to hop on over and check out her stuff. It's a fairly new blog that we work on together. Sewing is a main portion of her curriculum. I can teach a lot of basic skills through her sewing and she loves it!

State Fair News!

Congratulations E12!

On the Way to the State Fair

E11's Truth about New York game is on it's way to the New York State Fair! Congratulations E11! (he had three entries in the county fair this year...which uhoh! I failed to report on this year...better take care of that. All three got blue ribbons, but the game got a State Fair purple ribbon!)

He created this game as an assignment of his choice during our study of The Little Red Lighthouse and The Great Gray Bridge. The original version of the game was really nice, but he figured that typing up the various cards and making them look more trim was a good bet.

He spent a lot of time redoing his cards on the computer after figuring out what he wanted and I helped him cover a mouse trap game box to house his game. He decorated everything with NY stickers. See the results of his hard work below.

The Box- He even put a picture of the set up game on the front. I purchased the stickers when I bought the Bare Books game things.

Check out the deed cards. The first ones were done by hand and this really sharpened up the game's image.

Don't these look nice? E11 remembered to give credit where credit is due and these were all from Wikimedia so the are public domain.

Really nice improvement cards. you can see the difference if you click on the original game.

Every thing looks tidy. E11 worked really hard on this game all tolled.

It displays at the State Fair this coming week. No matter how it does at fair, E11 can be really proud. He did his best work on this game. We are planning to take a trip up there mid-week to see how it does. This is the first time any of the kids have advanced on to state fair. E11 is pretty excited.

Public Presentations 4-H Style

If you've been a Blog, She Wrote reader for a while, then you know that R9 participated last year in the 4-H public presentations. After seeing the fun last year, her brothers decided to join her this year.

E11 did a narrative talk on using Scratch for computer programming. He did a fabulous job despite the fact that we should have had an extension cord for the projector. You know...I thought about the set up ahead of time, but I made an assumption about there being an outlet close by to the area in front of the screen in the classroom. And why wouldn't I? In my defense, I taught in a science classroom with a large demo table at the front with outlets- all.over.it. It never occurred to me you could have anything less!

He did a fabulous job and earned a blue award and a chance to move up to the county level. He'll do the talk again next month. He taught the group how to get started and what the different elements meant at the same time with great poise. Next time, we'll be sure to have an extension for him, but it might be harder to come across a screen at the next venue. That's one to think on...
R9 did a demo of Face Painting and I7 was an absolutely cooperative client as he patiently stood still to be painted upon. She is a delight to watch in action. R9 has some serious craft show hostess capabilities! She also received a blue award along with the chance to once again advance to the county level.

Finally, I7 is a Cloverbud and did a talk on "How to Build a LEGO Space Ship without Using Directions". He did an excellent job building and talking about it at the same time. He was most emphatic about having a symmetrical ship repeating this fact several times. When asked about why at the conclusion of his talk, he answered simply and without delay, "Because it won't look right."

Public Speaking- what a great skill to hone as a young child. As our kids get older, they will refine their style even more and they can take on any manner of category as well. I would love to see a debate at some point for example!