During middle school years, it is documented that youth start reaching developmental milestones in the areas of: Physical, Cognitive, Language, Social and Emotional.  Bath County 4-H is always looking at providing researched, educational, opportunities for its youth to achieve these benchmarks in their lives.  This year marked the first year of youth attending 4-H Middle School Retreat.

The 4-H Middle School Retreat is an overnight camping experience, located at North Central 4-H Camp, Carlisle, Ky. Over 50 Youth & 14 Adults (Agents, Adult Volunteers, Assistants) from various counties, located in multi-districts, participated.  Overall this marked the 7th Year of conducting this retreat, but the 1st year, Bath County has.  Bath County had 6 Youth/1 Agent attend. The goals of the retreat is to enhance skills like: leadership, communication, social, teamwork, service learning, cooperation, problem solving, and much more.  Verbal and Written Evaluation from this Middle School Retreat included the following: "I met new friends from counties I didn't know existed."  "I want to come back next year."  "It was fun to learn new skills with kids my own age."