Children need to develop resiliency skills starting from birth. Serving as a Cloverbud or 4-H Volunteer puts you in a prime position to continue building resiliency skills among the Cloverbud age youth in your program. Resiliency can be described as the skills developed by overcoming a stressful or adverse situation/ event. Youth face many challenges at home and in their personal lives that strengthen their resiliency and allow them to emerge from those situations stronger.
Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child includes factors children identified as helping them overcome hard times in their lives. The most often cited factor is a consistent, caring, and supportive adult role model. This role model could be a parent, caregiver, or another adult that they interact with often – maybe even that Cloverbud or 4-H Volunteer! Can we build resiliency skills in our Cloverbuds? Absolutely! And you might not even know it, but you are improving those skills at every meeting. Give youth an opportunity to take a risk in a safe space within the club. This could be as simple as trying a new way to make the craft for the week. If the result is less than ideal, you have provided the safe space for them to learn and grow. Managing emotions can be nurtured by creative play and games that Cloverbuds might undertake at a club meeting. It might be that member that wants to win the game or finish their project first every time. Providing a space where youth feel comfortable asking for help if they don’t understand or need assistance with an activity builds resiliency.
Rename yourself the Strength Builder for Buckeye 4-H Club of Clover County because you are more than just a 4-H volunteer to those youth in your care. Make your own name tag, cape and dress the part, members of your club will be looking for the hero at the next 4-H meeting.
s (red, yellow, or orange); different tree fruit such as apples, acorns, hickory nuts, or walnuts; check off/write down the animals they see such a ladybug, wooly worm, squirrel, rabbit, bird, or deer. If youth are able, have them take a gallon size bag on their hunt to bring back a few items from their adventure. This will give you the opportunity to help them match the leaves and fruit from the same tree or compare the sizes of each object the members found. For a little extra fun, tell them to find the smallest and the largest leaf they can find. It will be fun for them to compare what they found with what others found.
n watch the birds. There are multiple ways to make homemade bird feeders. A simple and clean option is to use pipe cleaners and cereal. To complete the activity, you will need pipe cleaners, cereal, string or ribbon, and scissors. Select a cereal with a loophole that can be strung on the pipe cleaner. Members can bend their pipe cleaner into a shape, such as a heart, star, or circle. Be sure the two ends come back to meet each other. Connect two pipe cleaners together to make a bigger feeder. Members can string cereal on the pipe cleaner, leaving about a half inch on each end. Twist the ends of the pipe cleaner together to secure the cereal in place. Use a piece of string or ribbon to hang the feeder outside.
s. Tie a loop of string or ribbon to the top of the pine cone to hang your feeder with once it is complete. Use your dinner knife to spread peanut butter on the open pine cone layers. Hold the pine cone at each end and roll it through a bowl of bird seed until all peanut butter is covered in bird seed. Members are now ready to hand their completed bird feeder outside. Encourage Cloverbuds to hang their bird feeders where they can watch the birds from inside. As the weather gets colder, members can refill their bird feeders or make new ones and continue watching the birds through the winter months.