This week is my last week as a Rising Star Intern for northwest Iowa. Everything is coming to a close.

Guess the Tomato!

It was tomato week at PoP Club this week! The kids got to try many different types of tomatoes, including cherry, grape, Roma, slicer, and yellow tomatoes. After trying the tomatoes, they had to guess what type of tomato they tried blindly using the descriptions provided. Most of the kids enjoyed trying the tomatoes. In fact, all of the kids that tried the tomatoes at Sheldon liked at least one of the tomatoes.

Farewells and Goodbyes

This week I travelled around to all the counties I served to return supplies and say goodbye to the staff. The staff in all of the counties were so helpful and supportive over the summer. I definitely hope I have the chance to work with them again sometime in the future.

Presentations

To wrap up my internship experience, I travelled down to Ames to present to the College Deans of Design, Human Sciences, and Agriculture and Life Sciences, as well as some Extension staff. It was an enjoyable day, and I got to meet the other Rising Star Interns for the first time and hear about everything they have been doing. If you would like to see our presentation, it can be found here https://www.facebook.com/events/220108296666254.

After the presentation, we went to Clouds, which is a cafe in Ames. The food was delicious, and it had a very cool atmosphere to be in. Here are some photos of my food:

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Overall, this internship has been an amazing experience, and I am so grateful for this opportunity. I highly recommend this internship to all ISU students in the colleges of Design, Human Sciences, and Agriculture and Life Sciences. You can explore your interests through this internship and create projects that will influence the communities you are in. The skills that you develop and the memories that you gain will stick with you for a lifetime.

It is a bittersweet ending. I’m sad to leave, but I’m excited for my junior year at Iowa State University. I also have the satisfaction of completing all of my projects and having a clean backseat of my car again.

For the last time,

-Alex

Week 12

As our internship comes to a close, we are so thankful for the memories made along the way! It feels like it was just May and we were anticipating all the exciting programs that were to come. We don’t know how it is already August and everything is coming to an end. 

In our last week, we completed a program at Franklin Middle School and finished our last lesson at the Jane Boyd Community House.  At Franklin Middle School, we met with the Cooking Club and demonstrated proper knife skills to prepare fresh salsa. We also discussed why it is important to eat a rainbow of vegetables and fruit every day. Our second activity was completing a $10 meal challenge. The youth were split into groups of four and then had to search through grocery ads to find at least one food from the five different food groups to include in their meal to feed a family of 4 for under $10.  Everyone had a lot of fun with this activity and were excited to present their different meals at the end.

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On Tuesday, we completed our last program at Jane Boyd where we reviewed the different parts of a plant including roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. We discussed what vegetables fit into each of those categories and then made a FrankenPlant using one vegetable from each category. The youth enjoyed picking out and drawing different vegetables to compose their FrankenPlant with some popular options being tomato heads, celery bodies, and carrot legs. They also tried a rainbow vegetable medley including broccoli, celery, sunflower seeds, cabbage, radish, and zucchini, which we paired with our healthy homemade ranch dip. As a group, we toured the garden one last time and were even able to spot some tomatoes and peppers growing that will soon be ready to harvest!

We would like to thank everyone that supported us throughout our internship. The ISU Extension and Outreach staff in both Linn and Benton Counties have been amazing to work with! We cannot say enough good things about the great people in these counties! It has been such a fun experience getting to share our passions of food science and agriculture with over 1,100 youth! 

On Thursday, we are excited to share about all the programming we have completed over the summer in our final presentation in Ames. You can watch it live on the ISU Rising Star Internship Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/220108296666254/

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Goodbye one last time from Region 11,

Tatum and Maelyn