Hello again everybody! Jake and I hope that you all had a great 4th of July, we know that we did! Even though it was a short week here in Region 18, we were on our toes the entire time. Tuesday we were in Jasper County, where we had a chance to work on our garden designs and promotional plans. Jake is getting pretty good at working the new design program, it impresses everybody that gets a walkthrough! We also were honored to be interviewed by Christopher Braunschweig, a reporter from the Newton Daily News. He is very interested in the Inspiration Garden, and has taken it upon himself to help promote it to the community. He is planning to report with regular updates until the completion of the garden, and we appreciate it more than he knows! If you are interested in keeping up with his reporting, linked is the first article written: https://www.newtondailynews.com/news/local/2022/07/06/isu-extension-and-outreach-want-community-inspiration-garden-to-be-an-open-classroom/
On Wednesday, we switched gears a bit and were able to host the K-3rd camp, Kids in the Kitchen, in Marion County. We had a great turnout in Knoxville, and everybody involved had a blast! We were able to learn about how to eat everything in moderation, what a balanced diet looks like, why keeping clean and being cautious of germs is critical, and some essential kitchen skills such as measuring, mixing, and safety around knives and stoves. Best of all, we got to try out some awesome new recipes and taste-test the final products! Many of the campers (plus Jake and Myself) were able to step outside of our comfort zones and try some “scary” new foods. For some, it was asparagus. For others, it was a pumpkin-flavored pudding! Mine was broccoli, and Jake was brave enough to try some veggie salsa. While not every new food was a favorite for everybody, we learned not to “Yuck” someone’s “Yum” and to try it before we say we don’t like it. On top of all of that, we learned that the fire alarms in the building do in fact work when Kaylee let some of the oat and banana pancakes get a little warm on top of the stove. Mistakes happen, but you have to laugh and learn from it!
Once Thursday rolled around we were back at it with a camp for 4th-8th graders in Knoxville. We had a lot of future NASA engineers and astronauts pumped up and ready to go for Astro Camp! In this fun-filled six hours, campers were able to build bottle rockets and paper Mars helicopters, learn how to read binary code, practice their engineering and observation skills, and work in teams to solve problems. We covered just how huge our universe truly is, and many shared the sediment: we’re really really small. We created art (and a lot of messes) that were inspired by the Milkyway Galaxy. There were a lot of great videos provided by NASA that went a lot more in-depth than either Jake or I could have, and we hope everybody learned something and had a blast!
I took the last day of the week off to support my brothers at the Buchanan County Fair, but Jake was able to spend the day in Newton working on some of the finishing touches of the garden design and figuring out our calendar for the next couple of weeks. We’ll be finalizing our plans for the Marion and Jasper County fairs, and we’re both super excited for those projects! That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! -Kaylee