First 4-H Meeting

So I haven't posted anything in quite a few days.  With the long Labor Day weekend, relatives visiting and just life I let my little blog slide to the back burner.  Now that it is the middle of the week and life has settled back into a semi-normal routine I thought I would write about 4-H.  I help run a club here in town and my main job is to lead our projects.  We meet twice a month and I thought I would post what we do for a project at each meeting so that other leaders and 4-H'rs can get ideas for their projects.  Our goal for our club is to have the children work on a project that they can ultimately enter into the county fair.  I also make sure the project is educational.  One hard part is to get a project done in the short amount of time we have at our meeting and so sometimes I have a project that takes more than one meeting to complete or the kids have to complete the project at home.

For our first meeting this week I had no idea how many kids would show up and so my project had to cover 10 to possibly 30 kids.  I had the children bring a t-shirt to decorate.  I then had them use permanent markers (Sharpies) to decorate the shirts.  They could draw pictures, write their names, or just draw random designs.  Once they did this I then had them pour rubbing alcohol over the design they made with the markers.  (Just be careful that the alcohol does not get on the back of the shirt as the dye of the marker will bleed into the back.)  When done, air dry and then set with an iron.

I think this could be a very artsy project with an older child.  If one controlled the rubbing alcohol better by only letting it run one direction, or using an eye dropper, etc. the results could be amazing!  Hope this gives you an idea for your 4-H project or just something to do with the kids around the house.

By the way, this could fall under the category "Decorate your duds" or even "Item for your room" if you decorated a pillow case or something.