In March 2020 when the Covid-19 Pandemic closed the schools in Kentucky, our 4-H programming was severely impacted with the amount of youth that we could reach. In Fayette County we decided to offer programs and projects that youth could do at their homes. We supplied everything that they would need in a “Take and Make Kit” this allowed parents to come pick up the supplies from our Extension Office and take it to the safety of their home to complete. We offered these projects for 8 weeks throughout the spring. We covered several program areas as well including Natural Resources, Science, Engineering, & Technology, Health, Family and Consumer Sciences, and a few fun crafts as well.

We started the kits with owl pellets, the kits included an owl pellet, toothpicks, and a resource sheet to identify what they found in their pellet. Fayette County program assistants created an instructional video that was posted to Facebook for the participants as well. We also provided a living seed necklace kit to teach about seed germination, a night hike kit, catapults, stress balls, sun-catcher crafts, origami, straw rockets, gardening kits, bead key chains, and kits for the Heart2Heart Campaign. All of these kits had instructions included either written and included or via Facebook videos.

Overall we distributed 1,321 kits. Most of these were picked up by parents/guardians for youth to participate in at home, and we also distributed several to local school teachers to send home with their students.