Week 7
This week was spent investigating seeds, going on a journey with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and playing active bingo.
After the Benton County Fair last week, the office was fairly quiet on Monday. We used this down time to plan for the week. For lunch, we traveled to Garrison and had a fun time meeting with those who organized and put together the summer lunch program that takes place at the library. We ended our day helping with fair clean-up in the office. Our task was to help count the ribbons that were not handed out at the fair and organize them by color into bags to use for next year.
On Tuesday, we returned to the Jane Boyd Community House to give our weekly lesson. This weeks lesson was over seed dissection. We started off by asking the kids if they could think of any seeds they could eat. They were a little stumped by this question but were able to answer it when we gave them a hint and showed them the popcorn bag. That’s right popcorn is a seed you can eat! While the kids enjoyed their popcorn we read the book Seeds by Vijaya Bodach. This book showed the kids what is inside a seed, how a seed grows into a plant, other edible seeds, and different ways seeds are dispersed. One of the kids’ favorite ways to disperse seeds is to make a wish and blow on a dandelion.
The kids observing the progress of their garden. 
Close up of one of the plants in the garden.
Next, we did a fun seed dissection with lima beans. We first rubbed off the seed coat, which helps to protect a seed. Then we split the seeds into the two cotyledons which eventually become the first leaves of the plant. The kids used their handed lenses to identify the radicle that would eventually become the roots. When the kids were finished with the activity, we went outside to check on the garden. The kids enjoyed seeing the progress of the plants and all of the tiny little sprouts. Next week we will be doing an exciting lesson over composting so be sure to watch out for that!
On Wednesday, we traveled to the Prairie Intermediate School to hand out to-go kits at their summer lunch program. We were happy to hand out “Grow Your Own Spinach” kits to over 100 families! We also received a lot of positive feedback from the families that tried the ranch kits we handed out last time. That evening, we traveled to Cleveland Park in Cedar Rapids to hand out more activity kits at the Rolling Rec Mobile. Each child had the option to take a “Grow Your Own Spinach” kit or “Watch Me Grow” kit to plant their own spinach or bush beans. Despite the heat, we had a great turnout and were able to hand out over 30 kits. It looks like there will be a lot of little gardeners in the future! Along with the kits, the children also enjoyed putting on 4-H and Iowa State tattoos.
We finally got the chance to try out the Fifth Street Koffee Haus, which is just across the street from the Benton County Extension Office. We tried the salted peanut butter latte and toasted coconut latte, which were both very tasty! Our afternoon was spent planning and gathering materials for programming next week.
We traveled to Cleveland Elementary on Friday to do a program with Kids On Course University. We showed the kids the importance of physical activity and challenged them to try to get in 30-60 minutes of physical activity each day. Next the kids got to participate in a fun game of activity BINGO which is similar to regular BINGO but instead of numbers called out, exercises are called for the kids to complete and mark it if they have it on their card. The kids really enjoyed this activity and also had a blast checking the difference in their heart rate before and after physical activity.
We can’t wait for another fun week of programming next week so be sure to stay tuned.
– Tatum and Maelyn