[Music]
[Music] Welcome to our training today.
We're going to be looking at the new home
building blocks project a new project for 4-H'ers, ages
10-12 and something exciting that we hope for the youth
of Virginia. I hope you're ready to sit back
and spend some time with us today and that you've
got your tape recorders going because we're going to be
talking about this project and what we're going to do
today is going to be something that you'll want to
have to work with 4-H'erss and volunteer leaders in
the future. Hi, I'm Kathy Parrott and
I'm the extension housing specialist here in Virginia and I
am delighted that you're with us today as we take
a look at the new home building blocks project.
This is a project that we're bringing to Virginia.
It is a three year project for youth approximately ages
10- 12. And I'm kind of excited to
have it here. For the next hour. We're going
to be looking at what happens in this project,
project objectives what the 4-H'ers can learn the kinds
of materials that we have developed to help our extension
staff to help our volunteer leaders um to work with
our 4-H youth to get them involved and we're
also gonna look at some of the kinds of activities
the 4-H'ers will do and some of the things that
they can make in the, as they participate in
the 4-H project. As you're listening to the program
today. If you've got some questions a little bit
later in the broadcast, we will be taking some
call in questions. Let me tell you now to
jot down the number, It is 1-800-544-4930.
And I'll repeat that again a little bit later in
the program. To start off our broadcast, I'd like
to share with you a slide program that was developed
to promote and to introduce the 4-H Home Building
Blocks Project. Um, this will introduce our friend
Bebe, you'll learn a little bit more about what
are 4-H'ers do in the project and it presents
kind of a nice overview. As you look at the
slides keep in mind that we are going to be
providing copies of the slide set for you to use.
There will be copies in each district office as
well as the Media center here at Virginia Tech.
So sit back, I hope you've got your popcorn
ready. And let's take a look at the slide
set that introduces the home building blocks project. [Music]
Hi, my name is Bebe. Have you
ever wondered about all of the things that are in
your house and where everything came from? Most of
us take those things for granted it takes a lot
of time money and work to make a house,
an attractive, comfortable place to live. But how
do you choose colors and materials, What tools do
you use and how can you make your home a
safe place to be. You'll find the answers to
these questions by participating in home building blocks. Home
building blocks is a three year 4-H project for
10 to 12 year olds. There are separate members
manuals for each year. We can build many things
with black, even Holmes. It takes many kinds
of blocks to make a home. Let's explore some
of these blocks. The project is designed to help
you explore different blocks. Used to create a home
color, texture, line, shape, form and
space. You look at balance, proportion, rhythm
and unity. You will see how sound temperature and
light can make your home more comfortable and enjoyable.
You'll find out how to make your home a safer
place to be. You'll work with a variety of
materials such as paper, wood, metal, glue
, fabric and die the front of home building blocks
is being creative trying new ideas, experimenting, making
something unique to you. Activities involved making things for
your home or room and sharing what you've learned through
exhibits, public speaking demonstrations or community service. You're
one of home building blocks begins by showing you how
to use the blocks, color texture shape and line
creatively in your home, how sound temperature and light
can make your home more comfortable and enjoyable and how
to make your home a safe place to be.
The first section is color my world, color makes
our world interesting and fun. Color has personality.
It describes our feelings. Color creates mood in a
room. Using warm or cool colors can change the
apparent size in mood of a room. Go on
a picture. Search to find pictures with warm and
cool colors. Notice how you feel when you look
at each picture. Do you know what a color
wheel is? All colors originate from just three primary
colors. Make a colour wheel by drawing a design
with 12 equal parts and filling in the color with
paint crayons, felt or construction paper. Have you
ever tried thai and die tie and dye allows you
to create many different designs. Many of the things
you make in home building blocks can be framed and
hung on the wall of your room. The next
section, it's all by design brings you in for
a closer look at texture, shape and line create
a stencil design by folding a piece of paper and
cutting out small pieces. The same way you do
when you make a snowflake design. To help you
become more aware of the design building block of line
, make a viewfinder a view finder is an interesting
way to look at the lines around you, your
name or initials are lines that communicate, create a
logo or brand that is uniquely yours. A friendship
stick is symbolic of good luck, health and happiness
. It uses color, line, texture and shape
in its design, needle point is a type of
embroidery done on canvas needle point designs. Use line
shape, color and texture In Section three. Home
, my own place to live. You'll discover how
many blocks go together to make your home safe and
comfortable sound affects your surroundings. Loud noises, for
example, can be very annoying. The temperature inside
your house can make you comfortable or uncomfortable. Lighting
also makes a difference. Are the lights in your
home too bright or too dim? For what you're
doing is your home safe accidents can happen in every
room. Learn to recognize some danger spots that may
cause injury to someone in your family. Don't stop
when you've completed year one of home building blocks,
you're not finished. Go on to year to year
two builds on the blocks in the first year Section
one color my world, helps you understand color schemes
using hue value and intensity of color, Create a
nine patch design out of paper, wood or fabric
, which color schemes. Will you use design a
pillow or a wall hanging using fabric, make paper
blocks and use them for place mats, Arrange nine
patch wood blocks in a pattern you like the next
section. It's all by design lets you create form
space, rhythm and balance with lines. Form a
wire sculpture and mounted on blocks of wood or hanging
from the ceiling, sculpt a tree out of wire
and set it on a small piece of bark.
Use your imagination to create different tree sizes and shapes
. Swedish weaving uses rhythm, balance line and color
. We've different patterns into beautiful towels, placemats or
wall hangings for your home Section three. Home.
My own place to be emphasizes the importance of keeping
your home neat, tidy and well organized. Does
your closet need help construct shelves to store your games
on or a storage racks to organize the things in
your closet? Are you ready for something new and
different? In Year three, the last year of
the home building blocks project you will use all of
the blocks to create items out of fabric, wood
and metal to use in your room. Discover how
to plan space arrangements and what materials and tools to
use. Plan a wall arrangement from a scale drawing
, choose objects that will complement the furniture in the
room and arrange them so they blend in with the
furniture. To understand fabric more, you'll have the
opportunity to choose from several activities that involve working with
fabric, create a batik design by using positive and
negative space designs are drawn with wax, then the
fabric has died for a more interesting effect Quilt,
you're batik design. Wood is a basic building material
, much of the structure of the home and the
items inside are made of wood by learning to work
with wood. You can make many decorative and functional
items for the home, construct a storage box out
of wood. Make sure it's large enough to hold
the items you wish to store wind chimes made out
of wood. Give a soft, pleasant sound line
, balance, rhythm, form and color can all
work together in the design. Metals are often used
in art furniture and accessories for our homes. Metal
tooling was developed by the Egyptians and has been used
for centuries as a form of decoration. Metal or
tin punch is a colonial craft that started out by
punching holes for ventilation, inbred boxes and metal storage
cupboards used to store warm foods. You'll use what
you've learned about the building blocks of design to create
your own metal punch. What will you enter in
the county fair home building blocks has many possibilities share
what you have learned in a senior citizens center,
a nursing home or a daycare center. If you
are older, you can be a team leader or
a 4-H volunteer and help those younger than you
complete this project to enroll in this project, contact
the cooperative extension service office in your area home building
blocks. The project designed to help you make your
space an attractive, comfortable place to be. I
mean we will, I hope you enjoyed the slide
set today. Um, I do want to credit
that the fact that that slides that was originally developed
at the University of Nebraska by their staff there and
in particular. Surely Niemeyer, who is the extension
home furnishings and interior design specialist at Nebraska and we
really do appreciate being able to purchase copies of that
slide set and bring it to Virginia with this project
. I hope that got kind of excited. You
look at some of the things that, that the
4-H'ers can do, some of the things that
the team leaders and the volunteer leaders and the extension
staff can get involved in. Um, we're gonna
look at some of the different projects that they talked
about in a little more depth in a few minutes
so keep those ideas in mind. What I'd like
to do next is show you some of the written
materials and support materials that we have here in Virginia
to go along with this project and then we'll talk
a little bit more about the content of the project
. First of all, the project has four manuals
that go with it. Okay, We have the
project for year one, The Manual for Year two
, The manual for year three and then we have
a leader's guide that goes with all three years of
the project. This project is designed to be continuous
. In other words, the Foraker wants to enroll
in year one first, then go on to year
two and on to year three. Uh, some
of our 4-H'ers may want to do the project
in less than three years, but they do need
to go through the manual sequentially because the learning skills
are, are built on top of each other,
Those projects are printed, they are now available in
the distribution center and if you're good with numbers and
want to remember them, the numbers run from 354-0842354-087
. Um, I tend to think in words better
. So I would, I suggest you also remember
the title is home building blocks now to go along
with the project. I've also sent out a few
pieces of written material. Um I sent them out
in the first part of april and hopefully you have
those materials in hand today, but I'd like to
take just a couple minutes to show you what we
have here. We send out of packet of materials
to kind of introduce today's satellite program. Then you
have a fact sheet or an information sheet on the
home home building blocks projects. This is two pages
long so that you can print it front to back
, describes what the project is and the objectives and
a little bit about what you do and I hope
you'll use this as a promotional piece distributed to parents
or leaders or or 4-H'ers who might be wanting
to get involved in the project. Also, I've
sent in that packet, three individual sheets that correspond
with each year of the project so that you have
a little bit more specific information about what's going to
happen in that year. And I suggest you might
want to use those sheets with the individual for teachers
or the club or the leader as the fighters began
that particular here of the project. So it's more
to inform kids and and leaders who are about to
get involved in the project as opposed to the general
sheet, which is a promotional piece. Then I
sent you a clip art sheet with lots of pictures
of our friend B B so that you can use
these in different ways that you want to use to
promote the project. We've taken some some scenes of
BB doing different activities from different years of the project
. Then the final thing that I did send along
to you is a news release that you can use
when you do any training or any public programs or
any ways to kind of help promote the project.
Uh, it's a good way to give some recognition
to some of the volunteers that you have participating in
in your 4-H program as well as help announce
that project to the community. So I hope you
will use those, those pieces of material as you
as you work with the project uh, in your
in your particular unit. All right. That's the
materials that we have to go along with the project
. You've seen a slide set and remember that slide
set is going to be available to you through your
district officer through the media center. Let's take a
look now at what the project is really all about
as we developed the project um, and maybe give
you a little bit of background. I was one
of the co authors of the project when it was
developed in Nebraska. We've brought it to Virginia and
made some adaptations to it to make it appropriate for
our 4-H program. So I've been kind of
involved in this project for about three or four years
and so it's very near and dear to me,
as you might guess what we were looking at is
the young foragers that will be involved in this project
are our future housing consumers. They're going to need
to make choices and decisions about housing in their future
. They're going to need not only to obtain that
housing, but they're gonna need to know how to
, to maintain it, to take care of it
, to clean it, to make it a nice
home environment to decorate it. So, we kind
of had all those things in mind as we look
at the project. We're looking at things that they
can do with their own space in their home,
as well as their larger family home, as well
as different homes in the community. We were looking
at them, introducing them to skills to materials,
to tools that they will need to become familiar with
um as they grow up and become housing consumers and
tried to do it in in kind of a fun
and exciting way. So, let's start out by
looking at first of all, what are the objectives
for for the project were an educational organization. You
always have to talk about your project objectives. Let's
talk about the first one and that is where the
4-H. S. Will learn about color and
design and how to apply these principles and things that
they make and display in their rooms and in their
homes. Second objective is that they will learn to
work with different tools and materials that they will use
to make and display items, but also tools and
materials that they will use in maintaining and caring for
their home. Next objective that we have is that
they will learn to take responsibility for their own,
their home specific activities that may help to make the
home more comfortable, clean, attractive, and safe
. So we're looking at how they can be responsible
for for their home spaces. We also have an
objective where they learn to develop their own personal creativity
, we're encouraging them to explore different ideas, different
techniques, different materials and apply what they learn to
the development of or the creation of original designs and
items for their homes. So by doing, we
hope that they will develop their own personal creativity and
then our final objective is that we want them to
share what they're learning, share their knowledge with the
community at large, and we've built various suggestions into
the project so that they can take what they're learning
out into their community as a whole. So I
think it's kind of a kind of an exciting project
. Let's look at now how the total project is
organized, as I mentioned to you before, we
have three different manuals over three years each year,
each of the first two years are broken into learning
blocks and we've kind of carried this block theme throughout
. First of all. Block number one is color
my world and in that they learn a lot of
different things about understanding what color is, how it
works, how to combine it and so on.
The second block is, it's all by design and
this is where they begin learning design principles and how
they can use such things as rhythm and line in
space. And we'll show that a little bit later
, the third block is called home, my own
place to live and this is where they begin to
take responsibility. We have uh, some activities where
they learn more about maintenance, about cleaning, about
storage, about safety and they begin to look at
at their future home as well as, as the
home that they have today. Those are the outline
kind of the first two years of the project.
We felt that by the time the 4-H'ers got
22 year three of the project, which is the
purple manual, if you, if you like to
think in terms of color, that they were going
to be ready for something a little bit different.
So instead of having the block, we went through
and organized your three by some of the different materials
that they would be working with. The first material
that are the first thing that they learn is a
little bit about wall arrangements and scale drawings and so
on. In other words, be a wall wizard
is what we call that, so that they had
a foundation in terms of how to display the kinds
of things that they might be working with. The
second part of year three we call dying to know
about fabric and they learn some more skills with fabric
as the material, but they are going to be
applying what they've learned about color and design from the
previous two years. The 3rd part of your three
, would you work with wood? We have them
working with wood and part of the reason that we
chose this is wood is a common material that they're
going to need no need to know how to handle
in their home. And so we've got them building
some storage, learning a little bit about working with
hammers and nails and screwdrivers and buying wood and some
exciting things like that. The fourth part of year
three is a message on metal and we have them
again learning some of the tools and the skills that
they need to work with metal. We haven't doing
some craft projects, but we have them learning some
skills that are going to be real helpful when they
go to fix some of the broken things that they're
going to have in their in their home in the
future now that is how the projects are organized.
Let's take a little bit closer look at the project
manual if we can because I think there's a few
features in the project manual that that you'll find of
interest as we've developed a 4-H project as you
all know, not only are they learning some specific
skills such as as working with, would there also
um learning some things that will help them in the
future? I see my cameras ahead of me so
we'll talk about the Leader's guide. Okay the Leader's
guide is organized to go with um all three years
of the project and there's several different parts about the
the Leaders guide that I think you might find helpful
. Let's look at kind of a quick overview of
the content of the leaders guided. First of all
, we start out with with what I've called the
4-H philosophy, What is four h about how
can the leaders help promote some of the things that
we try to promote within forage, such as development
of life skills and so on. 2nd part of
the leader's guide reviews the project objectives and the guidelines
so that the leaders have a good feel for what
we are trying to teach and accomplish in this particular
project. The 3rd part is a review of the
developmental characteristics Of 10 to 12 year olds, what
what's happening to these Children, what do they like
to do, what are they able to do at
this age? And, and we think that's real
important that leaders, particularly if you have a volunteer
leader who has not been around that age child for
a while, that may give them a little more
confidence in what they're doing. The next part of
the Leader's guide is a series of meeting outlines where
the leader can can have kind of a short lesson
plan to work their way through the project materials on
a step by step basis so that they know this
is what we can accomplish in one meeting for a
club organization. This is the tools I need,
this is the supplies I need. This is what
I might want to accomplish. So we actually have
put together a lesson plan in a series of meetings
. The final part of the Leader's guide is a
lot of ways and ideas that the leader can involve
community service activities and recognition for the 4-H'ers.
And I think this is a real important part of
the 4-H project, allowing the Children to take
what they've done and share it with people in the
larger community and in return receive some recognition for what
they've accomplished. So that's available in the Leader's guide
and then that is the great, the great manual
. All right in each manual at the very front
cover is something that we have called a project planning
and evaluation sheet. And what this is is kind
of a substitute for a record book of some sort
. But what it has the 4-H. R
. Do is look through the manual and begin to
think about what they want to do. It's kind
of developing their own personal objectives. There's a lot
of material in these projects and probably more than they
can accomplish in a given year simply because how much
time they're going to give to 4-H as well
as the fact that they may be working on other
projects. So we have them starting out by saying
and they're planning sheet here at the beginning of the
project here. I plan to do these activities and
we encourage them to read through the manual, become
somewhat familiar with the content of it and then decide
I'm going to do so many projects or activities under
the color. My world block. I'm going to
do so many under it's all by design and I'm
gonna do so many under the third block on home
. My own place to live then as they work
their way through the man. You know, there's
a place for them to note from this activity I
learned in other words what did I accomplish from the
particular activity So that we begin to allow them to
zero in on the fact that this isn't just a
fun thing that there is some things that that they
were learning and then there's a place to make some
comments that they would like to in terms of,
this might be a place they might keep track of
what they spent or the time they spent. Um
the purpose of this sheet is to really give them
some experience in laying out a plan for themselves,
carrying it through and determining what did I learn,
What did I accomplishment? What resources did it take
? Now another thing that we have done in laying
out the home building blocks project is trying to make
the written material that's kind of interesting and fun for
the kids and so we've done a lot of artwork
, we've done screens and lots of different things,
graphics, but we have also incorporated through the project
2, 2 kinds of techniques that I'd like to
share with you. One is using something we called
, do you remember? And this is a little
review of some content that they're likely to have.
For instance, this is, do you remember on
color at the very beginning of the first manual talks
about color personality or color feeling and that's something that
the kids may have already become familiar. The other
thing that we use a lot is what we call
tips. And tips are spread out through all three
project years and they're screened and boxed in and this
is a little tip on a technique on how they
might do something for instance. This is a glue
tip that a good way to glue paper on something
without warping it. Um, here is another tip
that we've called. A pro tip. This is
when they're doing the tie dye and there's some suggestions
on doing the die. By using these tips.
We've been able to incorporate more information into the project
. That's a very concrete nature, but also make
the layout a little bit more interesting for the kids
. Okay, now we're going to take a few
minutes now at this point in the program to begin
looking at some of the different kinds of things that
the 4-H'ers can make. I want to remind
you at this time to remember if you've got some
questions about what we're doing in the 4-H project
. We do have a call in number and let's
put that number on the screen for you. Again
, it's 1 805 44 4930. And we will
take some calls today. If you have a particular
question about what we are doing with the 4-H
project, let's move over now and begin to look
at some of the kinds of materials activities, the
kind of neat stuff that the kids are doing with
the 4-H project. I must tell you that
the samples that I'm going to show and share with
you today. We're again developed at the University of
Nebraska and I appreciate them allowing us to borrow them
today. Uh what you might want to do is
as you work with this project in your area,
get some of the different 4-H'ers or volunteer leaders
to make you an extra sample so that you can
begin to collect a kit. It's a wonderful way
to really show off what the kids are doing.
We can show them visuals, we can show them
the slides. But uh, to see the real
, the real items is kind of a real fun
thing to do. All right, let's, let's
, let's look at year one and let's start out
with some of the kinds of things that the four
acres are working with. One of the first things
they do in the, in the color activity is
to begin to look at color feelings, mood and
so on like that. And we have them going
through pictures in magazines and uh, oh, a
variety of sources and begin to look at what our
color messages, in other words, what are they
trying to do when they use bright colors, warm
colors. We're looking at how, whoops, there
we go. How different colors stand out. Beginning
to have the kids look at colors and say gee
, how do I react to to these particular colors
. And so we have them doing color search.
We also have them maybe mounting some of these pictures
that, that show a particular mood and they begin
to get some experience working with paper and glue leaders
. Just love it when we start working with the
glue activities. One of the other things that we
do in year one is we begin to get more
detail and introduce the color wheel and we start talking
about primary and secondary and tertiary colors and one of
the activities we have them do is making a color
wheel but we suggest they might try it with different
kinds of materials. This one was done and felt
I think is particularly nice. Here is one that
is done in paint and we had the Children use
tempera paints and get some experience and mixing colors.
Uh, here's one that they did in crown and
so there's a variety of different materials that they can
use to, to make their color wheel. Um
as well as begin to get a feel for what
are some of the different mediums that you can,
that you can show color in. Now one of
the real fun projects I think in year one is
when we introduce the tie and dye And uh I
don't know, maybe I'm still a child of the
60s and that's why I like my tie and dye
so well, but we have the Children working with
tie and dye. Very simple process we have,
this is a rosette pattern and this is another one
if you've done tie and dye, you'll be familiar
with with some of the different patterns that we have
them working with. They're learning something about fabric and
about die and about color. Their designs are a
wonderful example of positive and negative space, which we
talk about a little later on in the project and
we begin working with them on a simple way to
mount their designs. Now this one is done in
an embroidery hoop, a very simple process. We've
put cardboard on the back and so on. So
and we also begin talking about how would you hang
different things on the wall So they take their tie
and dye and there's a number of different ways that
they can finish it off. And I think that's
one of the real fun projects in year one.
We also have them do a name logo, which
is an exercise in primarily in line but also beginning
to look for sources of a design ideas. In
other words, what can you come up with from
your name as a design. And I have two
examples here today. Here's one that was done with
paint and here's one that was done with wire.
We also have one where they combined, I can
show you this one where they combined the tie and
dye with simple embroidery and did a did a name
design. So again, different mediums, different materials
working with the same idea. Okay, another project
that we do in year one is the friendship stick
and the friendship stick uses yarn wound around the stick
. It is a very simple up and down kind
of process and the, the idea of a friendship
stick, the kind of history behind it is that
you develop a very unique pattern, an individual pattern
. Uh you may develop one pattern that you give
to a special friend and then you develop another pattern
to give to another friend. Or you may develop
your own unique design and make several of them that
you give to your friends as kind of a memento
. This is a good experience in working with color
, how lines combined two different designs and also it
begins to get them familiar with working with tension and
yard and developing some fine motor skills and they have
a lot of fun with. This is a great
camp activity, particularly even a warm up activity early
on in the camp and the kids do enjoy doing
that. It's fairly quick and fairly inexpensive project to
do. Now another one that we have them work
with which we showed in the slide set is the
needle point design. And this is just a little
uh simple pillow that we have to make. Uh
the needle point is uh gives them a chance to
work with color and shape and space. We have
instructions how to do a simple, a few of
the simple basic stitches in needle point uh in the
project manual. Again they're working with needle and thread
. They're getting used to manipulating another tool and getting
used to keeping your intention and some of those that
will, that will help them later on. And
so that's kind of another project. This is a
little slower project, but it's, it's a wonderful
one for them to work on over several, several
meetings or at home. We also do some things
with safety in that first year. One of the
things that they do is develop a fire escape plan
for their home. And here's a, a simple
fire escape plan. We talk about the importance of
developing escape routes from the bedroom, of having two
routes, having their meeting place. And uh as
they're developing their fire escape plan, they're also beginning
to learn a little bit about basic floor plans.
It's a good family activity that they can develop their
fire escape plan. Take it home and discuss it
with the other people that live in the household,
have a practice fire drill and then report on it
at the next club meeting. Makes an excellent topic
for uh for a talk that the foragers might want
to do An illustrated talk of some sort and a
very, very important concept for them for them to
learn. So those are examples of some of the
types of things that the foragers can do in the
first year of the project. And that's the Blue
Manual and that gives them kind of a view of
all of the different things. The three blocks that
we were talking about color my world. It's all
by design and home, my own place to live
, remind you again, if you do have a
call in question, we'd be happy to deal with
it today. And let's give you one more time
quickly. The number is 1 805 444930. Let's
take a look now at year two of the project
in here too is the green manual. It's supposed
to be 4-H green. So we'll see if
that matches up with your idea for h green.
Uh, we start the year to manual with the
same planning sheet that we talked about earlier so that
the 4-H'ers get that experience. All right,
let's do some of the things that they make in
here too. We get a little more sophisticated in
some of the things that they're doing in color and
we start teaching them about color value and intensity,
different hues, they have when they come into here
to a knowledge of the color wheel. And so
now we start working with it a little more sophisticated
and one of the things that we do is have
them make scales of different values of the same color
or they could do it with different intensities and again
we use a number of different mediums so that um
, whatever works best for your club or your four
acres will help this particular one is done with a
combination. This is a felt square, we've cut
some colors out of magazines and then we've painted a
few chips um a real good uh, activity for
them is to cut little chips of color out of
magazine ads, advertisements and then try to arrange,
you know, say a whole series of reds or
yellows by different values or intensities. We also have
them doing it, They could do it with paint
. This is an experience in paint mixing where they've
added white to one color to see how that makes
it lighter. And here they've added black to another
color to see how it makes it darker, begin
to get a little more sophisticated knowledge of working with
colors. We also can have them do it something
with crowns um and see how they can, they
can select the uh different kranz to make a value
or intensity scale. So again, they're beginning to
get a little more sophisticated in their, in their
knowledge of color. Now, one of the things
that we do a lot with in the second year
is working with the nine patch design. And if
you're a quilter or know a little bit about quilting
, you'll remember the nine patch design in quilting and
this is an excellent way to begin to learn about
positive and negative space, how to blend your colors
. There is some sewing skills that can be learned
in this one And we find that not only did
they begin to learn how the nine patch design is
put together. But what happens when you start combining
different nine patches and let me show you an example
here, This is a placement made with different nine
patch blocks that they combine together. So this gives
them a chance to work with the same nine patch
design, but using here's a here's a paper one
and um not only they getting some different skills and
paper, but when they start combining the different blocks
, We can reinforce the lessons that we've been teaching
about value and intensity and how different colors seem to
recede and uh move forward, tell you. So
there's a lot of teaching that can be done with
the nine patch design. Now we take the nine
patch design one way farther if I can get my
blocks over here And one of the other projects they
work with is nine patch blocks. And uh this
gives them an opportunity to learn a number of different
skills, This is their first experience with, beginning
to work with wood in this particular project. And
if you can tell, we've got uh different,
let's see there's one value of green and then we
have another, in other words, we've used several
different values of the same color of green in these
blocks, and they could use different colors and there's
a good teaching tool because they can arrange them together
. I only have four of the nine blocks right
here, but with a different nine blocks, they
can begin to arrange them in different designs. They
learn how about applying paint, they have to sand
the finish. So we're beginning to learn some skills
that uh first time they have to repaint their house
or they have to make a small repair and something
, learning to use sandpaper and learning to use prepare
a surface and paint is another experience. Um some
of the foreigners that have worked with this particular project
make the nine patch designs and use them as a
knickknack kind of display. Some of them have experimented
around and made a permanent display, which they have
then mounted. Um They've ended up sometimes in Little
Brothers and Sisters toy boxes, a toy. So
there's a variety of things. The idea is that
we're working with a nine patch design in a in
a number of different mediums and it gives kids a
chance to do a little more experimenting. We also
work with Line in year two and one of the
fun projects is the scribble in space where we have
them doing wire sculptures. This one used to stand
way up until it has been packed and mailed a
few times. But working with wire. Now this
is a different tool, are a different medium,
different material, and we have them learning how to
uh mount it on a piece of wood and then
they could finish or decorate the piece of wood and
it gives them a three dimensional sculpture as they scribble
in space with their wire. Another kind of space
activity is learning positive and negative space and this is
another quick fun activity that might work well as a
, as an opening in a meeting or at camp
or something like that. And we have them uh
color or select pictures, magazines, catalogs. It
could be a picture or design that they've developed themselves
and create movement by repetition of line and rhythm,
positive and negative space here to create the design.
And we get some real interesting kinds of of very
creative ideas as they begin uh cutting these pictures apart
, some fairly simple straight lines here like this one
we've had them do curled and and curly, cute
and something like that. So this is a fun
teaching tool where they can learn a number of different
principles all at the same time. Um One of
the other major kinds of things that we teach in
the year two is the Swedish weaving or you may
have heard it also referred to as huck weaving and
that is an old textile craft where we do,
it's a type of embroidery where you essentially, the
yarn floats on top of the fabric and the designs
are created by repetition of line and these are some
stitch samples here. And let's show what you can
do when you begin combining them together. Okay,
what you're using here is a wonderful way to show
how line can be repeated to create rhythm. And
then when you introduce space positive and negative space and
introduce color, you have a whole lot of elements
working together and this is, We find this is
a good activity for the 10, 11 year olds
. They, it goes fairly quickly so that they
can see the designs, uh, if they get
off offline with their fabric, it's very easy to
correct and they love to see how the design kind
of creates itself as they go along. And so
it's a good activity to begin to develop creativity.
They use the designs on a number of items for
the home. They could do a placement, they
could do napkins, they could do towels, they
could do a wall hanging. There's a variety of
ways that they could apply this particular skill, but
the kids have great fun with it. And uh
, there's several different kinds of fabrics that this can
be done on. And so we find the materials
are usually fairly easy for, for the leaders to
get ahold of, and that's, That's usually one
of the favorite activities, I think in the year
two. Now, we also have them doing activities
in home cleaning. Uh, we find that that
maybe this one is a little bit harder to make
exciting. Um, but the parents love it.
And so we do have uh, in our uh
, manual uh, some chart activities where they can
uh, learn about some of the different materials in
their home and how to take care of them.
And then they make a pledge daily I'm going to
do this, or weekly I'm going to do this
. Uh you could get a little uh competition going
in your club. We've also got some puzzles for
them to work with to kind of make this part
of the project a little more interesting. Uh so
they do begin to learn about this is wood,
and this is how you clean wood and this is
plastic and this is how you clean this. And
there are some activities that kind of make that a
little more interesting along with cleaning. We also have
them learn about storage and organization and we have some
activities where they begin to for instance, they clean
out their games and their toys and they create an
area to store them in and they organize them through
some of these activities. We teach some basic principles
of storage and then we have several projects where they
can make storage items, storage shelves for instance,
and we start teaching them a little bit more about
wood finishing. This is where we start introducing a
natural finish and we have them using a penetrating finish
here or they can just some wood samples here.
They could paint them, we talk about different ways
, they can create storage shelves, hanging them on
the wall, balancing them, uh using bricks or
different things to to mount up. So they're learning
the principles of storage as well as some very good
skills in making some of the ideas, we have
them, looking at some consumer activities. In other
words, I could go out and buy some shelves
, what would it cost me and how does that
compare with what it would cost me to buy the
material as well as the value of my time and
which would meet my needs. So, uh we're
kind of sneaking in some some good consumer skills at
the same time with this particular activity. Okay.
We also have a storage rack project, which I
don't have an example today where they learn uh different
ways that they can find things to hang things on
and to hang them on the wall. And uh
they introduced, which I think is one of the
basic skills that every homeowner has and that is what
are molly bolts and toggle bolts and how do you
install those and hang heavy things on the wall?
And so that's one of the first things that they
learn in this particular area. Um you can,
I hope begin to see that even though we have
the 4-H'ers, doing a lot of crafts,
a lot of very creative activities, encouraging them to
learn fun, creative design activities and skills were also
having them learn how to work with the materials and
the tools that are gonna be very helpful to them
as they get a little bit older now, year
three of our project are purple book is a little
bit different. We felt that first of all,
by the time the fortunes get to this project,
they're gonna, most of them be 11, 12
. We may have some 13 year olds at this
point they needed something a little bit more exciting and
a little bit different. And so instead of working
with our blocks, we began pulling it together as
we described four before and have a little bit more
complicated process or more complicated things for them to do
. We started out with our be a wall wizard
section and begin to learn about principles for arranging and
displaying things on the wall and hanging them. And
one of the activities that we have them do is
using catalogs, magazines or photographs that they might take
of, of friends homes or their own home and
begin to to look at how our wall pictures or
wall hangings and different things arranged. We haven't put
some tissue paper over it and begin critiquing it so
that they can learn some some principles of, of
arranging things in the walls. And we have some
guidelines that might help them in terms of uh,
for instance, matching up pictures that you hang on
the wall with with other architectural features and how you
match edges and centers and so on. And,
and that's a real helpful one. The other thing
that we do is part of the wall wizard and
I'm not sure this will, I'll show up on
the camera is learn to do a scale drawing.
We have been working with graph paper and do a
simple scale drawing. Uh This is a room and
you can see the door in the side light of
the door. This is their basic drawing and they
might plan their wall arrangement on this. They'd make
the scale drawing and they cut out the pictures to
scale and begin arranging it on paper. And if
you've ever cut out pieces of furniture trying to figure
out how to get them in a room, you'll
see that this is, this is building up to
a skill that that um that they'll be real happy
to have as they get a little older, then
we go on to the next section which is dying
to know about fabric. And one of the things
that we have them doing there is Batik and there's
uh some excellent lessons that can be learned on this
because as you know, Batik is a positive,
negative kind of design where you, you put the
wax on to resist the die. And so we
have them working with uh all sorts of different things
for ideas. This one looks like they drizzled on
some things and they also use some paperclips is kind
of the guidelines for for this one and we've got
them working with circles and so on now because they're
developed a little more in their skills and they were
when they did the tie dying. We also spent
some time in terms of learning how to mount and
put different things together. Here's one that's been mounted
on a board. This one has been put on
stretchers and you'll see this one. Give him an
idea if they wanted to do a two stage batik
where they've introduced a second color which introduced hold all
sorts of new design ideas. This particular one is
mounted in the hoop and I'm not sure if you
can pick up. We might be able to that
. It has also been quilted and so we've introduced
another skill where they're taking both. They've got shapes
and space here but we're also capitalizing on the lines
and so that gives them another tool that they can
begin to work and and develop some of their designs
with. Um We, we stress some safety precautions
working with with the batik as well um that I
think will will stand them real real well as they
move through next. We work with wood or would
you work with wood? Yeah. And I brought
two of my favorite projects along this is our wind
chimes. If you can pick up. They have
a nice mellow sound. These are simply molding scraps
that we have have found for them. Um This
is to make this, they need to do some
experience in terms of cutting and finishing. Uh they
need to use the screw wise. We've got them
doing this with a braided fishing twine as well as
finishing the material. And here we get into a
little bit more skills about wood finishing and as you
can see it's it's mounted. We also suggest if
they want to they could do this one with color
and offer some different ideas in terms of color.
Oh then we teach them how to make a basic
storage box. And I've been told that if you
learn to make a box you can do anything in
woodworking. Well let me tell you after making these
boxes. I'm not sure that I'm going to progress
past the box, but maybe I'm in the right
field not being a woodworker. These are made with
plywood and so they need to learn to measure and
cut. They need to learn about things like curve
for the saw thickness and drilling their holes. Now
this one is not finished. But we also talk
of learning about making storage such as for books or
records or um I don't know maybe they're into compact
discs now and learning how to decide what size they
were and allow finger room for the things that they're
storing with it. Okay, they learn a little
bit about gluing and cramp and clamping and how you
might construct the box. So if you see the
edges here and here and different kinds of joints.
Uh Some real simple basic woodworking skills that might might
do them real well as they get through the future
. So this is one of the the important would
activities um that you, that they'll do in this
one, Then the last one That they work with
in year three is working with some metal. And
we have two basic activities. One is the rape
you say, which is the using the, creating
again them so you can get it. So you
can see it here. This is a little teddy
bear design where they pushed out the metal. They're
learning a little bit about different kinds of metal.
This is done on copper. It's a positive and
negative kind of design. They learn about mounting it
and finishing the piece of wood that they're on.
Uh we also talk about learning about tarnish and what
tarnishes, how you remove tarnish how things tarnished so
that they can control the tarnish to create part of
the design for them. And then we have them
doing some tin punch in the slides, You saw
them working with some fat flat pieces of tin punch
. This happens to be a candle and this happens
to be a pencil holder that they've done with tin
punch on inexpensive leftover cans. Great way to recycle
your cans if you haven't got a place that collect
them and we have them fill these with water and
freeze them and then rest them in a towel and
they work with their nail and their hammer. And
one of the, I think the most important things
is learning how to control a hammer. And again
, it's one of those skills as a homeowner,
if you can hit a hammer without hitting your thumb
, it makes life a whole lot easier for you
. And the kids, they give them lots of
ideas on where they might develop their their designs for
their tin punch. And my experiences. Again,
the kids are wonderfully creative as they work with some
of these ideas. Well now you have it,
that's home building blocks as you can see, I
enjoy working with the project. I think it offers
are 4-H'ers a chance to develop some skills that
are going to continue to be very important to them
as they grow older and become housing consumers, whether
they rent, whether they own whatever type of housing
that they live in. Uh it's going to teach
them some skills and some familiarity with some tools and
some materials and some techniques that will allow them to
make their home more comfortable a safer and more convenient
place to live and it gives them a chance to
have some fun while they're doing it, so I'm
glad you could join us today. Um I've enjoyed
a chance to uh to talk with you and uh
thanks a lot for your time. Yeah. Yeah
. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm