Many times day camps will request 4-H to come out and do an activity for the afternoon. On July 28, 2015, 4-H Agriscience in the City sent its two student workers to the Cincinnati Hebrew Day School to teach Rockets Away to a Jewish Camp’s boy division. With about 50 boys, there was plenty of excitement in the air when 4-H arrived right after the boys’ lunch break. The boys broke into three groups and each one was supposed have 40 minutes to build rockets. The lesson began in the gym with some general information about rockets and what the difference is between the rockets the boys were building and real rockets. Where the program got a little out of hand was when each boy tried to build a rocket. It is not easy to build one of these rockets, so to try and give directions was somewhat challenging. Eventually, many rockets lost their wings before even being launched. Once launching commenced, the boys’ screams of excitement made all the work getting the rockets built worth it. The first group took so long that only one other group got to build and launch rockets. In the second group, pairs of campers built a rocket which made building rockets and launching them a much more manageable. The boys really enjoyed the program, so much so that the director of the boys division said he would reach out again to 4-H to try and get them to come back to the camp this summer.

The week of July 27^th, 4-H Agriscience in the City taught at a STEM camp in Laboiteaux Woods as part of a partnership with the Cincinnati Parks. The camp itself is run by the Cincinnati Parks and has two great instructors, Ginger and Jason. Each day starts out with an introduction to a certain STEM idea or project. For instance, one morning the campers built and continued to improve upon their own catapults designed to launch small Styrofoam balls. 4-H would come in after the morning introduction, offering new lessons and ideas to enlighten the campers to different applications of STEM.

Each day 4-H would offer a new lesson and activity, some classics coming from 4-H activity books, other original lessons developed by Hamilton County’s 4-H director, Tanya Horvath. The way the day would go, is that the campers would split into two self-selected groups (which at this age meant there was a boys and a girls group). Before lunch, one group would go on a hike and the other group would stay at the shelter with 4-H. After lunch the two groups flip-flopped.

4-H taught at the camp 4 out of the 5 days. The first day was an especially exciting activity. The subject was oil spills and the activity was a simulated oil spill clean up. Rice played the part as oil and at first all the campers had to clean up the oil was a hexbug and a cup. They were not allowed to use their hands at all. The challenge had a story component to it, with an update every five minutes. An update included additional supplies and an report of the damage and death count from the oil spill. The campers struggled to clean up the oil and began to understand how machines can be helpful and detrimental and how bureaucracy can be inefficient in dealing with emergencies.

The next day was another activity discovered and developed by Tanya called Beak mobiles. Using simple supplies like plates, rubberbands, popsicle sticks, a toilet paper roll and a skewer the campers had to design and build a car that can create its own energy to move. The lesson focused on the energy change from potential to kinetic. The students got 5 minutes to think independently before seeing the model mobile. Afterwards, they could use the model to build their mobile or still design their own. After every group had built a mobile, they tested their mobiles against each other in categories like speed, distance, control and ability to move in a straight line.

4-H did not do an activity on the third day, but returned on the fourth day to make lava lamps with the campers. This simple activity does not come from a 4-H book, but does come from OSU Extension. It is an easy way to explain the basics of chemistry. The campers poured water with food coloring into a clear film container and then oil on top. Then they added an Alka-Seltzer tablet, which dissolved in the water creating bubbles. The bubbles traveled from the water into the oil where they struggled to move up and created groovy shapes and designs just like a lava lamp.

The final day, the kids did one of the most basic 4-H programs, Rockets Away. In this activity, the campers built rockets out of 2-liter bottles and cardboard and got to launch them. There is more to this than just building the rocket, the campers aimed for the highest rocket and most efficient. Then they used math to estimate their rockets height and trajectory.

4-H Agriscience in the City had a great time at the Laboiteaux Woods camp and if just one camper walked away knowing a little bit more about science, technology, engineering or math, then their involvement will have been a success.

July 29, 2015.

The week of July 20-24, Tony Staubach and his two student workers, Max and Sammie, launched the first ever 4H Agri-Science in the City summer day camp in Over-the-Rhine. The camp was originally offered to students of Rothenberg Preparatory Academy, and was to be provided without any cost to the students or their families. Ten students between the ages of seven and eleven were signed up for the camp. With many scientific water-related activities planned long in advance for 25 hours of excitement and exploration, the 2015 4H₂O camp was officially ready to go!

On Monday morning, the camp crew arrived early and awaited the students’ arrival in the Eco Garden, across the street from Rothenberg. They were anxious, as they did not know what to anticipate from the students or how many students would show up that day. Three students arrived around half-past nine, so the day began with nametag making and getting to know the students. Monday’s theme was “Properties of Water” and the campers enjoyed several activities that taught them about surface tension, capillary action, and density. Following lunch, the campers explored hidden treasures of the city, with Nature BINGO, where the goal was to see as many pieces of nature as possible; examples included an apple tree, a squirrel eating a nut, and ivy crawling up a building. Though at times the campers expressed exhaustion from the hot sun and frustration with the lack of ease in finding nature, at the end of the day, the Nature BINGO was their favorite part.

The water-filled week of science adventures continued with Tuesday’s theme of “The Water Cycle.” The campers investigated evaporation, condensation, and precipitation as well as what a watershed is and the negative impacts of erosion. They were provided with the opportunity to build their own watershed and learn all about the connection of water bodies within it. In the afternoon, the group trekked across Cincinnati all the way to the new Smale Park by the Ohio River. The campers ran, climbed, and played around the park until it was time to venture back to the Eco Garden for dismissal.

The next day was “The Importance of Water Quality,” and to the surprise of Tony, Sammie, and Max, three new students showed up. They weren’t Rothenberg students—nor were they even in elementary school—but they were ready to discover the interesting agri-science concepts the 4H camp had to offer. Activities on this day involved discussion of pH and working together to test the pH of many household substances to investigate the differences between acids and bases. The students expressed enjoyment in using both phenol red drops and pH indicator strips to compare substances. They even got to travel to Washington Park and test the pH of the fountain water. That afternoon, the campers visited the rooftop garden of Rothenberg Academy and set up desalination kits and cleaned dirty water through handmade water filters.

Day four was all about appreciating the community. The students had the opportunity to discuss community service and to provide a service through creating birdfeeders to hang in the garden, and the afternoon included a walking tour of the Pendleton, Over-the-Rhine, and Race Street community gardens. It was clear that the campers most enjoyed picking numerous apples from the Race Street garden’s apple tree.

On the fifth and final day, the theme was “Wacky Water Fun.” The campers created artwork, built a fountain, and investigated with a leak-proof bag experiment. That afternoon, the 4H campers ventured to Washington Park to take part in the Cincinnati Parks Nature Next Door camp, with a craft, game, and guest speaker all about birds. Following that program, the campers rested for a quick lunch in the park and then spent much of the afternoon cooling off in the park’s fountains.

Over the course of the week of the first 4H Agri-Science in the City summer day camp, days were precisely planned yet unpredictable and exhausting yet full of worthwhile exploration and excitement. Tony and his workers are looking forward to next week, August 3-7, where they will host the camp one last time for the summer.

Teaching Away The Summer; 4-H Agriscience in the City’s 5th Quarter at Rothenberg
Most kids finish school in May and rejoice at the prospect of no school for 3 months. Some students, however, attend a 5th quarter of school in the month of June either because they had a lack-luster performance during the year or they just need a safe place to be for the summer. These students have all the classes they would have during school, but in classes with other kids from their grade that need extra help.
The day begins at 7:15 with breakfast, and then the morning consisted of math and language arts, testing both reading and computational skills. Then came lunch that led to the afternoon Imani program. That is where OSU extension 4-H Agriscience in the City comes into play. The afternoon consisted of 5 40 minute periods where students would go through different classes. There was gym, music, art, world languages, culture club, gardening and, of course, science. At 3:40, the students came back together for dinner and then went home.
4-H Agriscience in the City or just 4-H aims at developing career oriented skills in students in poverty stricken urban areas. Its founder and main developer, Tony Staubach, works at Rothenberg during the year teaching science as part of an external partner with the school. For this summer program he is joined by two summer student assistants, Sammie Chamberland and Max Hartley.
The Imani program’s theme was the world and each age group was a different continent. 4-H’s theme for their science program was water, especially water conservation. They tailored each lesson to the continent that the students were assigned to. Each lesson began with an introductory video to a certain water subject, such as the struggle for clean water, water wildlife or water conservation. From there, the main teacher, which started out with Tony then slowly phased to the summer assistants, would probe the class with questions. Whether or not they remembered everything from the video, as long they walked away knowing just a little bit more about water, then the videos had been a success.
For the last 25-30 minutes of the period, 4-H’s goal was to keep the students interested, and what better way to do that in science than with cool experiments and activities. Some of these included something as simple as mixing Kool-Aid and discussing how dissolving works, to making lava lamps out of water, oil and an Alka-Seltzer tablet. That’s not all the students accomplished with 4-H. Another goal of this month was to have artifacts to showcase afterwards. In science, the students made multiple artifacts, which included a fishy landscape, water baskets made out of weaved magazine clippings, desalination kits and water filters. The fishy landscape was created by taking the student’s drawings of fish and underwater plant life and pasting it on a blue backdrop. The other crafts had real results, the water filter actually made dirty water clearer and the desalination kits, when put into sunlight could change salt water into a little bit of fresh water. These activities captured students’ attention and hopefully sparked an interest in learning more about water, science and 4-H.
While going to school for an extra month may sound boring and unfortunate, and for some kids it was even mandatory, the 5th quarter program at Rothenberg gave many students a brighter future. Learning about everything from science to language arts and everything in between can only help these students in the long run.