Service Learning

For my service learning, I got together with a group of other people in my class, and we

created a 4-H day camp for the kids in Jefferson county. This camp took place at the beginning

of March, and our group started planning from the beginning of January.

We first started with a theme that we could create our activities around and thought it

would be fun to create a St. Patricks day theme. Our theme was “Finding your pot of gold, by

following the 4-H clover.” After creating our theme, we created activities that we wanted to do

that we could teach them where they could learn something, while still having fun. These

activities ranged from family, to science with bottle rockets, and cooking with making butter. My

partner and had the topic of finances and thought it would be fun to teach them the difference

between wants and needs, and then have a yogurt parfait they would have to buy with fake

money where they would have to decide between all the options they had and deciding what they

really wanted. We also thought we should teach them how to do a basic budget given a scenario

with income and expenses. We also had to create a workbook that the children could keep and

have with all the activities that were done the day of the camp, so they could take it, and be able

to recreate it to compete at the fair.

My partner, Courtney Shields, and I created a lesson plan of how we wanted it to go as

having to create the fake money we would be using, as well as the budget with the scenario. We

too had to create a budget for ourselves given a certain amount of money we could spend on the

food for the parfait as we were planning on around 15 children. We created a budget on how

much we think we would need and planned out how much that would cost per child.

A week prior to the camp, we met with Amanda Hickman who is the 4-H educator in

Jefferson county. We told her of our plans to see if there were any concerns with allergies, or if
she thought there was something we weren’t going to be able to do with our original plans. With

our budget, we also wanted to see if there were any supplies we would need she already had so

we could save money.

There was a lot of planning that went into this camp that I did not realize how much work

it was going to be. While we did not keep track exactly of how many hours we completed, we

think it was about 10 to 12 hours. This included all time planning, creating our lesson plan along

with the fake money and budget, going to visit Amanda, going to the store to get supplies, and

the day of the camp.

The day of the camp went really well and the kids had a really good time. We arrived

early to get set up and get everything ready to welcome the kids. We had the kids draw on bags

that they would put all of the supplies from them camp to take home with them. We played get to

know you games and the kids loved all the activities that we had planned for them. The children

loved our lesson and we were surprised on how fast they picked up the concepts we taught. Our

yogurt parfait bar was a huge hit and the children had fun budgeting their money for their

yummy snack.

Doing this experience can help when I go teach especially when I teach finances.

Depending on what age group I teach, it might need to be tailored to fit the age group a little

better, but this would be great for a middle school age. This could be used as a formal lesson,

teaching wants vs needs, or it could be incorporated into other lessons talking about finances

with creating budgets. One thing that I could do, is after teaching how to do a budget, is have the

students keep track of their own budget with expenses, and income, along with talking about the

importance of setting financial goals. This was a really fun lesson to teach and great experience
for when I teach and given me the opportunity to come up with how to make this age

appropriate, as well as being able to make it fun.