The last quarter of any program year is a time to “finish-off” and “gear-up.”  Most program years for 4-H programming involve finishing-off programs being offered to schools as they wind down the academic year and gearing-up for summer programs for young people involved in 4-H camp or 4-H Shooting Sports, 4-H livestock exhibiting, 4-H horse drill team competition, and the list goes on .  Most years, the spring and summer are busy, busy times.  Most years are not the program year 2019-20.  And most years do not involve a pandemic.

A pandemic involves a different way of living.  A pandemic forces one into a different mindset.   A pandemic introduces a new “vocabulary” that include words as social distancing, self-isolation, virtual meetings, community spread, quarantine, flattening the curve, personal protective equipment or its acronym “PPE,” drive-thru- testing, and the list goes on and on.  A pandemic changes life and the way things get done. 

That is the situation that came to be in early to mid-March.  With it, the way things normally were accomplished changed.  As a result, programs offered to schools became “brown bag” programs that young people could pick up at the Extension office and summer programs like 4-H camp became Camp-in-a-Box.  Livestock certification and validation went on-line to allow members to obtain certification and validate their animals for summer show season.   

One program typically offered to schools in the spring is the 4-H Butterfly Study, a 2-3 week observation program taking participants through three of the four stages of the metamorphosis of the Painted Lady Butterfly.  Forty kits were distributed to families and four classrooms (using it for virtual observation and learning) who reserved a kit once the social media announcement was posted.   

The observation and learning began.  Questions such as, “how big do the caterpillars get before they become butterflies?”  “What if one of the caterpillars does not attach itself to the top of the container as it forms its chrysalis?”  “Is my butterfly bleeding as it emerges from the chrysalis?”  “What do I feed the butterflies?”  Wonderful questions that led to teachable moments over the telephone, through email or texted back-and-forth.  Overall, a positive experience was noted by all those who participated.