Working With Cloverbuds

April 24, 2024

This video will cover a few key ideas for working with our youngest 4-H members ages 5-7, or cloverbuds.

Video Transcript

All right. Welcome everyone to the Michigan four H volunteer Webinar series for April that is working with Clover buds. We're excited that you're here to join us today. I'm Christine Heavey. I'm an extension educator based in the Clinton County Office, which is the county directly north of Lansing in East Lansing. And I am on our volunteer support team, and I focus on how we train and support volunteers across the state of Michigan. And I will let my co presenter give a quick introduction, also. So, hi, everybody. I'm Christi Oosterhouse. I'm a supervising and staff development educator up in Antrim County, so that is Church Lake area north of Traverse City. And I'm looking forward to talking with you all today. Thanks for joining us. And so we want to take a moment to thank our early childhood collogues for some support with some of the content that we're going to share today. But we're excited for you to spend your potential your lunch hour with us as we talk about working with Clover bus. They are an exciting group to work with, and we want to give you some tips, tricks, and strategies for that. So, MSU extension fully believes in the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You know that human differences enrich our lives work in community. We embrace our responsibility to be a resource for all and are committed to providing programs of all segments of our community. It's also important to understand the longstanding history and legacy of colonialism that has brought us all to reside on the land and seek to understand our place within that history. And the land and knowledgement on the screen is one step in that process. Kristie's going to put into the chat a quick survey link. We ask that anyone who is attending this training, please consider taking it. Unless you are doing this as part of your MSU extension employment. If you're doing this, if you're an MSU Extension employee and doing this on your volunteer capacity, you can complete it, but if you're doing it in terms of an employee, please don't take the survey, but we ask everyone take a moment to complete the survey quickly for us to help us show how we are meeting the demographic needs across the state of Michigan. So this is part of our volunteer webinar series of webinars that we have been doing over the past two year and a half now. That give that are short webinar that provide content, the Help FH Club and group leaders on different topics. You can find that we've recorded all the past webinars, and they're all available. The recordings on the volunteer webinar series page that Kristi just put on the chat. And then you can see that we have two topics coming up in the month of May preparing forgers for fairs and showcases, and then managing risk for volunteers. We have four topics set for this fall. I'm still working on dates and official title. So watch the website and your email for more information on those. So we are glad to have you join us. Today, we're going to cover a few key ideas for working with our youngest foge members, ages five to seven, or as we like to call them clover buds and have a space at the end for conversation idea sharing. There's a lot of experience in the Zoom room today, and we want you to be able to share and hear your ideas, too. So feel free to add them to the chat as we're going through and be ready to share them at the end, also. So we're going to start with a quick ice breaker to get to know each other. So in the chat, I would like you to put what is your favorite tip for working with Clover buds? So we have keeping activities simple and short. Make every project fun and short. Yes. Yes. Get on their level. Oh, so important. Let them add their own ideas and encourage individuality. Yes. Awesome ideas everyone so far. Let their creativity come out. Keep it hands on whenever possible. Make it light, not too serious. Awesome ideas, everyone. Feel free to continue to add them into the chat as we go through and keep sharing those ideas because you all have a wealth of knowledge that help us all be better in our roles, working with Clover buds. Talking to the kids and finding out what they like to do for fun. Yes, yes, very much. So in FH, we get to work with youth in many non formal settings. These spaces can provide youth a place to belong, matter and explore their spark. High quality F H programs provide youth a place to belong, matter and explore their personal Spark. And it's important that these components are part of all of our programming, especially in our Clover bud programming, We might not we think about youth a little bit older sometimes, but this allows us to really start to think about Spark and helping you thrive. Even at that clover but experience, we want to get them engaged, get them excited, help them find their sparks, build those belongings, build those relationships, and start to have that engagement as they move through their four H experience. So kind of important to know is that all youth have sparks. The term spark is used as a metaphor to describe something that is internal to each of us, something that gives us meaning or joy. And many clover buds have them. Our clover bud programs are a great place to start exposing youth to a large variety of things, so they can start to see what things bring them joy, energy, excitement. Starting them young to expose young people to a large variety of things is helpful and helping them find their spark. Often, some kids even find their sparks during this area, and we want to help foster and grow that during this time. So really having start talking that what makes them excited, what brings them joy is important. It's intrinsic and in from inside to person. It's it's not imposed on them from the outside, it's something that's truly within them. And then it's that source that can be motivation, meaning, self direction, and action that can help drive young people. It can help make the world a better place. And most specifically, sparks can be skills, talents or interests that go deeper in their sides inside of them. So it could be something as they're good at a certain sport. They're good at crafts. They really like certain crafts. They really like Livestock animals. It could also be that they're showing lots of kindness or caring or giving back to people. And so it's really important that you start to think about when you're working with your four H clover buds, is how do you help them foster those things that get them really excited already? So as you start talking about moving into some group management strategies for clover buds, what are some strategies that you have that you've used that work well when you are working with your clover bud groups? Some of those may be repeats from the ice breaker. If you want to type that into the chat, and I'll give you a moment to type in. Yeah. Breaking into some smaller groups for projects is great hands on activities, and they show off their projects to the older members. Mm hmm. Yeah. Bringing in older kids to work with the younger kids for the fare connection. Offering two different projects. Yeah, so if people are done quickly, you have a backup project that they can work on is a great strategy. Yeah, lots of teaming up with older kids. Feel free to type in more ideas as we go. So there are some basics for working with youth of all ages. But these are especially important for our Clover but youth. So first is to build to share some of the power with the youth. So the youth want to have that power and autonomy and choice. So as you mentioned offering options for them, let them have that hands on experience, so they have the autonomy of actually doing the project themselves, asking to help them where needed or if they ask for help. And allowing them to have appropriate choice for their activities so that they can have that individual opportunity to shape their specific own project. Youth also want respect, so they don't want to be talked down to even clover beds, they want to be heard. So giving them the opportunity to share their voice, listening to what they have to say and taking that into account when you are doing projects with them. And then, as Safral mentioned during the ice breaker, attention spans can be short with youth, especially with our clover bed ages. So making sure to keep activities short to really tailor the activities to capture their attention span and roughly two to 3 minutes at a time and definitely no more than 20 minutes at any one stretch, but make sure to keep things fast moving and ongoing. So we also want to consider routines and patterns when we work with our clover buds for group management. So it's important that you set up clear expectations that are established from the start of the program. So routines are really important to let the youth know what to expect to set up those boundaries and opportunities for a safer environment and to help promote self control within the youth. It's important to make sure to Establish group rules and norms, if you do, and do that in collaboration with youth. So even Clover bid youth can be a part of establishing and setting those rules and norms. And if you do that, make sure to also be consistent from your session to session if you're doing a project over a longer period of time and also create a visual for the youth so that they can see those rules or guidelines or boundaries posted, make visuals, have them engaged in making a poster that you can put at each of your meetings. And then also when you're doing that, to make sure to focus on the does rather than the don'ts. So doing things like instead of no running if you want youth to walk during your project meetings, make sure to establish that as please walk during project meetings, instead of a don't run. So just reframe reframing those boundaries and expectations into a more positive manner. So you also want to consider the energy and tone that you're bringing as a leader. You as the leader are setting those expectations of how you want the group to be. The energy that you bring, the tone that you have, the non verbal communication that you use all will have an impact on your group management for working with your clover buds. For example, with your volume, if you get loud, they're going to get loud. Um, make sure that you consider your environment and space. So is your physical space having really bright lights? Is it having furniture set up that is conducive to the project and the group management strategy that you want to use? So really take a look at that and change your physical environment as much as you can to adapt to the group management that you want to have? Also, working with our clover buds, it's really important to take movement breaks, so make sure to build in some opportunities for physical movement, get them up, walking around, doing some fun physical movement activities. And again, switch them up. Attention spans are short, so make sure to have a variety of activities. Someone earlier mentioned offering two projects, so the ones that are done quickly can still have something to do, which is an excellent strategy, always have a backup plan and have activities in your back pocket that you can pull out at any moment, both either to lower energy in a room, increase energy in a room or provide that opportunity for youth that are done quick with an activity so that they have something to do and something to work on. And then with your language use, words often can paint a picture in our heads. And so when you're talking with your clover bed youth, paint a picture of what you want them to do. So again, using the example of walking, so say, you know, please walk in this space instead of don't run so that you are using your words to help that image form in their minds of what you want them to do rather than what you don't want them to do. Make sure to be very specific and clear as well. So if you are setting up, for example, group norms or boundaries within your meetings, and you say things like, or youth mentions even something like, I want us to be respectful in this space. Break it down. Talk over what does respect actually mean to the specific youth in the group? What do you want respect to mean so that words are specific and clear when you're working with them. Offering choices is really important. So making sure that there are at least two to three choices that you are good with that you're offering to them instead of an unlimited, what do you want them to do ask, and then also make sure to offer choice in a larger group setting, if you're working with multiple youth because in a large group setting, someone may not want the first choice that the majority of the group is going with. So make sure to offer several different options so that youth have different directions that they can go in in that larger group setting. And then make sure you use reflective language and focus on your own needs or feelings. So reflecting back what you are hearing them say. So if you hear them say, you know, I really like this particular project because of X Y Z, reflecting back to them and saying, you know, I think that's great that you like this project and that it connects to this external factor that you just said. So that reflective language to the youth communicates that they feel respected and heard and valued. So that's important in communication. And then focusing on feelings and needs rather than shaming or humiliating language helps also to promote and foster those relationships. So instead of saying, for example, if youth are being really loud, instead of saying, Oh, you're rude, you're being really loud and that's rude, you could say something like, I'm having a hard time hearing, so and so talk, Please, if you could make a different choice and talk in a quieter tone or allow time for this person to respond so that we can all participate in the activity. So using that language that talks about needs and feelings and group boundaries rather than shaping you're blaming. So when we talk about Clover buds, there are a wide variety of ways that you can signal how to pay attention in a group setting. So again, if you want to type into the chat, what are some ways specifically working with clover buds that you have used to try to gain the group's attention back or an individual the attention back? Repeating so. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Walking around and getting on the use level. Yeah, redirecting by asking them questions about what they're doing is great. Mm hmm. Yeah. So these are all great ways to try to redirect either an individual the attention or a group attention. So, you know, if people aren't paying attention, you can say, I want everyone's attention. I'm missing three youth that are three youth attention up here. You can make eye contact. You can physically move around in a space. Physically moving closer to clover bed youth is a really great opportunity to show attention and try to redirect. Getting down on their level and asking those questions is great. You can also set up time expectations and help them through those time expectations. So saying, I'm going to give you 5 minutes for this activity and then providing a reminder at 3 minutes, another reminder at 1 minute and then 30 seconds, having those constant reminders of how much time they have left to work on an activity. You also another opportunity for signaling paying attention is to make sure that your own body language and ways that you are moving throughout the space is inviting responses from you. So making sure that you have open body language that it's not closed off with closed arms, making sure that you're smiling and leaning forward or stepping into things to try to invite those responses. So when we think about youth voice, we often think about these with our older youth. It is still really important with our clover by youth to really think about youth voice and how we build that into our programs still. It's still very important to get their feedback and have them buy into the program that it is theirs. This can be done through play and activity, really thinking and observing as they're playing and getting engaged in activities, and taking you can see where they're more engaged in activity and they're not and take that into consideration when planning things out. And then also take the specific time to have choices, of what they could work on for the next meeting, having two or three options and let them kind of think through, what would they like to do and have them make those decisions on what it's going to be. You bring some ideas for them, but they get to make the decision on what it is out of that. So we're going to spend some time really looking through what are some of the Michigan four H Clover bud learning guidelines as you really think about your clover bud experiences? What are the guidelines on what you have to do? So really when we think about it, as a parent volunteer older teen must be with Clover bud youth when they're participating in all activities. We recommend one adult or older teen for every six clover buds. But keep in mind that some activities require a higher ratio. And sometimes you want more than that based on if it's going to be a really high active activity, you might want more adults and older teens there to kind of rein it in and bring people, or if it's going to be a really messy activity, you might need additional there for help with the cleanup pieces. In our four H programs, we do say that parents should only work with their own kids unless they've been through the gold level screening process. When we are working with Clover buts, especially opportunities should be cooperative learning experience. Research has indicated that peer competition at this age is not developmentally appropriate. Peer competition is defined as two or more individuals or groups working to achieve an outcome where one individual or group is declared the winner or finishes in first place. Some examples of where we see peer competition and four H already are like judging contests, Exhibits, shows an award and other performance activities. We want clover buds to encourage to participate in these things, but we have to think about how do we do it, so there's not those competition pace in them. It might be setting it up to be non competitive with equal recognition given to all participants in the forage developed, competitive classes, sales, treaty, all of those different pieces where it's a learning experience for them that they can still learn the skills, they can still participate and have fun, but it doesn't have that competition pace in it. Activities at this age should reduce the risk of failure and celebrate successes. We really should be focusing on what they're doing well and get them excited about this. This is the age that we can get CV buds, super excited about their forage experience. So catch them in with it by having excitement. So you want to encourage success through a variety of ways by focusing on encouragement rather than praise. Praise can be phrases like Good job. That is beautiful. Without a specific emphasis on what they did to earn that praise. So it could be, for example, when we look at this picture on the screen, you could tell someone, great job. You did a really good job. And that's really just about praise. To be encouragement, we want to say, You did well with squeezing all the juice out of that lime using the juicer. Additionally, with this age group emphasizing and participating and learning in the activities, that's really important. So how do we get that encouragement about what they're learning? They're learning about how to get all the juice out of that. They're learning about how do you connect that to what other activity they're doing there and why they're squeezing the lime juice out for an activity. So it's really all about our learning guidelines are really about how do we make these learning fun experiences for you? So when we think about it, we have so many youth who come to our four H programs that are excited about animals. And so we have some specific guidelines on how Clover Buds can work with animals, and it's important that we expose clover bud youth to animal projects. But how do we do that? They often might not don't own their own project animals that they work with, so it needs to really be an educational experience. And some kids don't even have the opportunity to have them at their own places, if they don't have that in their background. So how do we expose it? We really want it to be focused on the educational activity center and experience, making sure it is centered in that experience. Um, and so that they can learn about it, they can gain. It's those learning experiences that they can gain within that opportunity. Then we always have to think about safety first. We need to ensure that it's a safe experience for it. We need to have knowledgeable adults that can be strategically placed in different places to help youth be safe with whatever animal project they are working at. Specifically, there are some pieces that are different age ranges are able to do when they're doing animal projects. So five year olds must be directed or assisted one on one by a parent guardian or adult when they're working in contact with a livestock type animal or a rabbit, any kind of animal project except horses. We're going to talk specifically about horses and amendment because they have some specific guidelines. Um, And it's important that this is where the base is, what five, six and seven year olds can do when I talk through this. But they all have varying levels of experience and background. So it might mean that a seven year old might be more at the five year olds level and what they're comfortable doing with, and we have to be prepared to help with that because they might have been the experiences they had. So for our five year olds, they have to have an adult volunteer parent or guardian that's always with the child when they're in contact with an animal. As they get a little bit more as they get older, members who are six and seven might be more comfortable exploring their independence with animal projects. So they're given a little bit more opportunities with that, but there still needs to be that direct piece of helping them with their animals. So six year olds must be directly assisted one on one by a parent or guardian who is in close proximity while the child is in contact with the animal. Where a five year old, they need to be right next to them. Close proximity means they can be step a little bit step farther away and not directly with them. Then we look at our seven year olds and they have a little bit more freedom if they're comfortable. It's always about we have to look at each person and each child individually because ages and stages are really Age development, ah kid develops on their own pace. So our seven year old, they can be in supporting roles for close proximity. They might not be right next to them. They might not maybe at this point in time, if they're showing a sheep that halter might be completely off of them and that parent or guardian or adult volunteer is right next to they're ready for if they're doing a dairy feeder, maybe they're not even holding the halter anymore and they're just next to them, ready to grab it if it needs to be. So it's really sing those pieces through. But it's not always just about the show experience and when we talk about animals. There's so much more to our animal projects that Clover Bud you can be doing. So we're going to do a waterfall chat quick about what are activities you could do with clover buds around animals. So I want you to take a moment to think about what are the activities you could do with clover buds that are animal related. I want you to type it in the chat, but don't press Inter yet. I'm going to count to ten before I say to press inter. So you're going to think about what activities you could do with clover buds around animals. Oh, put stickers on body parts or name the body part that you need to raise to raise that animal. Oh, great one. Right. Some other ones that can be done is have a stuffy that they have a stuffed animal that they can handle. That's a perfect one. Have them start identifying it. Having them identify visiting a farm and get the experience being around them. Okay. They could identify species, breeds, parts, and tracts of animals. So having them look at the different footprints that are with the animals and identifying it, recognize the differences between animals. Constructing a arts and craft activity that shows what an ideal specific animal might look like, selecting and identifying the equipment they might use with it. Observing animal behavior, learning about the different livestock terms that might be. Determining an animal's age, Oh, where they go where also we did a Prog D the different parts of an egg. Good one. Explore veterinary clinic. Identify products from animals. Explore what animals eat. Do a tour, take them on a field trip to a feed store. A vet clinic. A different farm. Name the male, female or baby of each animal. Awesome. Feeding animals, visiting Zoo. Attend a for each give a short presentation. Heavem keep a scrapbook and take photos of when they're learning about their animals. Learn about animal photography. So we all can really think about what are those ways? There's lots of different ways they can engage with animals and can be really fun and just to expose them to those pieces. So thank you for all your great sharing. So, there are some specific guidelines for when working with clover buds in the horse project areas. Across all ages of clover buds working with horses, youth must wear helmets approved by the American Society for testing materials, the ASTM, or the or safety Equipment Institute, SEI helmets and the certification labeling must be on that. Youth with the Four age age of five may be involved with equine on the halter and lead. Each four age clover but must be accompanied by one on one by a parent, guardian or adult volunteer who is on foot, holding the animals halter or lead to maximize safety. Youth with the Four age age of six may ride a horse unaccompanied, but only at a walk, adult volunteers should be in the ring with the clover bud at all times. And then Clover youth with the eight for HH of seven may be involved with equine on a halter and a lead unaccompanied by an adult on the ground, for example, a showmanship type class. They also may participate in a walk try track event with adult volunteers in the ring at all times. But remembering, these all need to be non competitive still, no matter how they do it, but this is what they can do within that horse project area. And all of the livestock the animal guidelines and the horse guidelines are in the learning guidelines link that Kristi put in earlier, that will also be shared in the follow up e mail that you'll receive later this week or early next week. So we'll talk a little bit about Clover buds and science activities. So the goal of teaching science in four H is to do inquiry based science. And with that, it's all about the questions that youth are asking. When you ask a question that you can't answer, that's actually a win. It's okay to not have an answer all of the time when we're teaching science. With Clover buds, specifically, we want to foster their investigation skills and their natural curiosity by saying, you know, what questions do you have or how do we do that? Or what do you think? And then following up with that on exploring that path. So by not having an answer always, you can explore that path with the youth together, so that you're learning and their learning. It's a win win all the way around. So it's all about the questions that we ask. With science, you don't have to accomplish the task. It's not about what does that end result with clover Buds. It's about exploring that journey, not the destination. You need to have fun and run with it. You want to foster that natural curiosity, and it's okay to deviate from lesson plans with Clover Buds. If they have an idea, it's okay to run down that rabbit hole and see where it goes. You also want to think about when you're thinking about your group management skills with science to keep your group small. Science with clover buds can often be loud and messy and fun, but it's best to keep the group small. Clover Beds may not always be patient when doing activity that requires them to wait for results. So this is where having a backup activity handy or something else that they can do while they're waiting for results is critical. So play a game, take a walk, do another activity while they're waiting for results from the first activity. Clover beds also may not have well developed motor skills. But it's important to encourage them to try to try things on their own and to be okay with the results. It's okay if it's not perfect. Also, clover buds are generally not abstract thinkers. So help them to understand the larger science concepts when you're teaching science activities by including that hands on exploration. So when they do have questions and you're delving into their curiosity about something, make sure to keep it hands on and keep it moving. So in the chat, I did put a link for one of our suggestions for activities with kids, and there's another one that I'm going to put in. Well so What she's putting in now are two really great resources that have lots of lesson plans that you can utilize to build in some science into your Clover bud meetings or even your general club meetings, and then just look at how you make them work for clover buds. They're pretty easy, simple, quick activities, and they really are focused on that whole question piece about that's with science, and they work well with clover buds also. These links will be shared in the follow up e mail, so you will have them directly then too. Yes. So another resource that we're going to share are heads and hearts and activities. So these activities are geared to foster early childhood learning to connect in school learning with out of school opportunities in a family enrichment setting. So youths are participating in these activities with their parents. But these activities are also really great to do in club meetings or different settings like that to again, foster that youth engagement, a lot of these are pretty quick, so they are great for providing some backup opportunities and resources, and activities. These resources all encourage youth and families to use their minds by putting their heads in as a tool to expand their knowledge around these different topic areas. So they range anywhere from early childhood to literacy to engineering and science and math to healthy living and other family engagement activities. So we'll put that link in the chat as well. And again, these will all be shared. And then finally, we'll have a put all of these links in the chat. So these are a variety of resources that we've talked about and some additional resources that we have for working with Clover butts. The first link in there is our main link for for how to work with Clover buds and through the main website or Michigan for H Clover Buds page, you can find the resources and links to other recommendations for working with Clover Buds. There's the learning guidelines link that we talked about and the heads and hearts and activities. And at the bottom, the inquiring minds want to know science activities for young minds covers the science that we talked about. And then we also have a Clover Bud snapshot sheet series and a specific Clover Bud animal science record book template that you can use as well.