Youth need opportunities to develop social skills, civic and leadership skills, create strong connections with caring adults, have access to safe places to interact with their peers, and support services to allow them to become more independent adults (Blank, M.J., 2017). 

The past few years the Logan County Cooperative Extension Service has offered the Lead to Read program at our elementary schools partnering with the school FRYSC and classroom teachers.  The program is planned by the Extension FCS agent, Extension 4-H agent,  and school FRYSC and carried out with the assistance of leadership students at each of the schools.  The leadership students assist  in the delivery of the program by helping with the hands on craft activity, the healthy snack recipe sampling activity and reading the theme related storybook to the younger students.  

The Lead to Read program was centered on the book Click, Clack, Moo – Cows That Type.  All of the students in the program received a book to take home with them thanks to the generous sponsorship from Logan County Cooperative Extension and the Family Resource Youth Service Center. 

To go along with the book, students were able complete an activity where they made cow puppets. They also enjoyed a dairy related nutritious snack and learned some fun dairy facts with our Family and Consumer Sciences Agent, Rachel Hance and our SNAP-Ed Assistant, Paige Alexander. 

The Lead to Read program was delivered at three of the six elementary schools in our county.  A total of 145 youth participated in the program in addition to the more than 30 leadership students that helped facilitate the program at each school.

Each school was able to adapt the program to fit their needs, but they were all successful in allowing leaders in their school to lead a hands-on project with younger primary. This program was designed to bring older students and leaders in the school into the elementary classrooms to build relationships and serve as a role model. It did just that.