4-H

Let m just start by saying that if you don't know what 4-H is, I can't explain it. YOu can read more about it here.

4-H project sheets are to be signed later today by our group leaders- doesn't that sound ominous? Well, it is. We are still filling them out, only I just discovered that we were never given one of the books and project sheets we needed for The Boy, and there's just no way to fix it now, so he'll take an incomplete. I thought he and his sister would just share a book and we'd copy the record sheet, only I just learned today that since he's almost two years younger, he was supposed to have an altogether different book and record sheet which it is too late to complete. It's very problematic that we don't actually do grade levels in our home school.

On the project sheet for weeds, the youngest two Progeny are answering the question, "Why did you take this project" with "My mother made me." On one of the project sheets we are filling in the date project began and date project ended with the same date. I was weeping over the phone with a friend, telling her how inadequate I was, and she says she does the same thing, only she doesn't bother with the date. She would just write Project Begun: 6/08, and Project Ended: 6/08, and let the judges fill in their assumptions about just how inadequate we really are.

Another question they had to answer was about how weeds spread. In addition to the material in the book we are reading from Weeds, by Dorothy Childs Hogner (also here)- a nice guide to weeds written at a childs' level without being insulting. One of the ways weed seeds travel, of course, is that animals or birds eat them, don't digest the seeds, and they spread them through the process of elimination. My youngest two Progeny were indignant at my suggestion that they merely write, "Animals eat them one place, poop them out somewhere else." They said they would only write that IF they could add, "Our mother told us to say that." No wonder I feel so guilty about it all.

We ran into some trouble with the difference between the two questions:
How may weeds be introduced?
How may weeds be scattered?

The main reason for this trouble is not that we can't tell the difference between the questions (although they do overlap quite a bit), but that the project manual writers apparently can't, as they mixed up the two in a single paragraph that wasn't the best example of clear writing I have ever seen in my life.

So I know what I would say, but I don't know what they would expect to hear.

In some places 4/H really isn't that big of a deal, but in this place, it's quite The Thing To Do. I would guess that there are more homeschooled kids in our county than there kids NOT doing 4-H- and yes, almost all the homeschooled kids do 4-H here, too.
So I thought we would try the cult out this year so we could try to fit in a little more, because we really don't. At. All.

This Not Fitting In-ness was really highlighted for me at the very first 4-H meeting we attended. There's a pledge. And a 4-H flag.

I pledge
My head to clearer thinking,
My heart to greater loyalty,
My hands to larger service, and
My health to better living,
For my club, my community, my country, and my world.

Here is where I confess that I am not really comfortable with the Pledge of Allegiance and, in fact, I only make it a point to teach it to my children as a bit of common cultural knowledge. We don't recite it at home. My husband does not feel the same way, so he and the children do recite it where called for in public. I mumble and look uncomfortable.

So if I don't even like to recite the Pledge of Allegiance AS a pledge, imagine how I feel about this one. The 4-H pledge gives me the willies, and no, I can't explain why. Just call me a curmudgeon.

Why are we doing this, again? I think the photography project is good for Pip. I think the electrical project was a great bonding experience for the youngest two and their daddy. And it does make people look at us more like members of the community and less like three headed creatures from the freak show. We're only two headed freaks now.

You know what really gives me the willies? We'll probably sign the two youngest children up again next year.