Vegetables, fruits, dairy, protein, grain

In Carroll County, beginning in June, the First Friday program begins.  It is held on the Courthouse lawn from 4:00 to 8:00 with Farmer’s market, live singing, and the Cooperative Extension office setting up different activities.  For the September event, 4-H marketed the 5 food groups and healthy living.  We set up a garden full of vegetables and had signs for the audience to pick up and place by the vegetable.  It was amazing how many did not recognize beets or turnips.   We had protein set up where we had wooden hens laying eggs with prizes inside and a volunteer talking about protein and demonstrating how to tell if a egg is good to use by doing the sinking egg activity.  Grains were demonstrated by having a plywood lamb eating wheat and then handing out wheat thins to show that animals and humans eat grains and the importance of grains in your diet.  Moving on to fruits where plastic apples with prizes inside hung on a tree and the children picked an apple to remind them to eat fruit.  They also used cookie cutters to  cut fruit images out of play dough to make a fruit salad. Clover, the plywood cow, was there for the children to milk and the volunteer talked about the importance of dairy in their diet.  Adults as well as  children enjoyed these activities.  One hundred and fifty one people joined in the activities and 12 new families signed up for the 4-H program.

 Milking Clover the 4-H cowaAIdentifying vegetables