Nebraska 4-H Reading Connections
2024 Adventure Begins at Your Library
with Anne Dexter – Antelope Co. Extension Office Summer Intern
The 4-H Reading Connections program engages youth in extended 4-H learning opportunities in partnership with the Collaborative Summer Library Program.
With that we talk about the 4 H’s: Head, Heart, Hands, and Health and begin each activity with a physical activity to get our minds and bodies ready! The first week we talked about Head and Mapping Your Community. The kids and I walked
around the Library to look at different ways to map their community around the library. They had to come up with symbols that would also go their map key. Once they had a sense for that part of their community they wanted to map, they drew it down on paper making sure they had key symbols on their maps. We read the book Mapping Penny’s World.
Our second week we used our heart by talking about healthy foods that are good for you. We started our afternoon off with fruit and veggie yoga in the back yard of the library and moved onto our main activity, TIE-DYE! Not your regular tie-dye but with liquid that was boiled off from purple cabbage, red beets and the spice turmeric. Each kid was given a white handkerchief and rubber bands they dyed with the colored water. They couldn’t decide between Zombies Don’t Eat Veggies and Eat Your Veggies, Goldilocks, so we read them both!
On to our third week where we talked Hands: getting outside and exploring nature with our hands. The activity was started off with a nature scavenger hunt with in the block around the library. They worked together in groups or by themselves to find everything on the list! Then we used some of these things to make a garden stone our of salt-dough. They could either imprint the leaves, flowers, sticks, pinecones, etc. or keep them in the dough. Then they were sent home with instructions on how they could let these dry. Along with this activity we read The Tree That Bear Climbed.
Our final week was about Health and Battle of the Senses with a couple taste testing
experiments. First, we played an exciting game of hot-potato then broke out the blindfolds! The kids have to use their senses; feel, smell, taste to see between different types of food and guess what they are eating. Just Try One Bite is a book about kids trying to get their parents to put down the junk food and just try one bite of health food. I thought every kid could relate to that!
