We had a great time at Teen Conference and were happy to see four of our campers, and one was even presenting!
Thanks to our campers who helped with activities. You're the best!
State wide 4-H events are a great thing to attend, there is always a lot to learn and interesting people to meet.
A summary of our two sessions:
Teaching New Skills:
This session was super interesting! We will definitely be playing with some of these activities at camp. We started out with a communication exercise, challenging groups to be clear and concise. From there...we were teaching either skills they did not know or teaching skills their partner did not know. One of the most common demonstrations was "rabbit/chicken handling" and "rabbit-chicken putting in/out of cages." So many of these members said it was one of the hardest things to learn in their project areas. They had their partners doing the activity within minutes!
I was especially excited about this as we have been talking about one of our camp activities this year to be on animal handling and restraint. Using
Sophia Yin's book _
Low Stress Handling, Restraint and Behavior Modification of Dogs & Cats_ When I read this book, I thought "WOW, this would be a great
TagTeach activity to do at camp! We can start with stuffed dogs and go cooperative real dogs!"
Our other session was on clicker training animals. We were surprised, not only did we have a huge attendance, but more people came than we expected. Clicker training is simple but not easy! It was exciting to see the variety of species everyone had (livestock, to horses, to dogs, to birds!)and the interest. Next year we will probably break down our activities even further. If anyone remembers our activities from the previous year, we've learned hands on is better than lectures...but hands on for 50 people is -quite- a challenge!
Thanks to all our campers who attended and assisted.
