Plans for New 4-H Year

So this how our club works.  We have nine members or ten if you count me (the leader).  Seven of them come to meetings, one is an independent member who had been a regular member in the past but is now too involved with many other things (as most 16 year-olds are) to attend our meetings.  She was a wonderful mentor for us last year teaching those who were interested in our group (nearly everyone) how to do pastel paintings.  They all exhibited their work at the fair last year and loved it.  The other independent member is the younger sister of some of our members who wanted to start being a Cloverbud this year and will do it at home with the help of an older sister since we are taking some time off from having separate Cloverbud projects as part of our meetings, if that makes any sense.  Sometimes it just gets too complicated to do it all.

 The way we work our meetings (after trying different things over the years) is that we have a regular business meeting the first week of each month, and on the third week of each month we have a work meeting where the members can bring things they need help with, or (and this is usually the case) I present an activity that I know they are interested in learning about, or I present something I know is important for them to learn in order to do the projects they plan to do for fair.  So we have just two meetings each month.

This year at each of our 1st meeting of the month, a member is required (by me) to give a presentation of their choice of subject.  I did the first one in December to show an example of how to do it.  I did mine on how to plan and begin a quilt project.  In January, a girl gave one on how and when to use the whip stitch. We have enough meetings before fair to schedule each member to do one presentation.

This year our club goals are:
1. Do presentations in club meetings
2. Do services projects  (Our quilt)
3. Do field trips to a quilting shop (Done) and to a floral shop to learn flower arranging
4. Everyone do a record book, 5th graders and up(Last year 3 did them)
5. Do at least 2 projects for fair
6. Have projects done (or at least started) before fair entry date June 14.