4-Hrm/531 Week 1 Personal Reflection

I was able to learn by doing through my 4-H projects that taught me various life skills which I can now use to apply to other areas of my life. My 4-H club curriculum focused our projects on culture, environment, and interaction with the community. The goals that my group had set was to expand our knowledge of multiple cultures, strengthen our fishing and camping skills, and learn how to care for our environment in different ways. The most recent 4-H projects that my club has been centering our attention on have been part of the culture and environment curriculums.

During the first year of focusing on culture, I worked with two other group members to teach the rest of my club about the Greek culture. We collaborated with one another to create a presentation and Olympic course after we learned that the original Olympics was held in Greece. This group experience enhanced my skills of cooperation, time management, independence, learning the values of various cultures. As a group, we equally split up the work of researching and presenting, so as a responsible group member, I learned to follow through with my portion of work. Other than doing research, presenting the information and activity to

the rest of our group members built my public speaking skills. While the other groups presented their information, activities, and snacks relating to the culture they researched, I gained valuable listening skills. Some of the interesting points that I learned by listening to the other presentations were that the one of the drinks that originates from Mexico is a rice based drink called horchata and the hawaiian word for the month I am born in, September, is kepakemapa.
In the following year, we continued to focus on the culture curriculum, but instead we would concentrate on the japanese culture.

Our project also changed over time because rather than learning about cultures from presentation we began creating a Japanese zen garden for the Konawaena Elementary School. This became the Japanese Garden Renewal Project which we planned, organized, and planted a garden based on the japanese culture and garden influences. After participating in this project with my club, I learned the importance of gardening carefully as to not injury the plant. Furthermore, before even gardening, there was a long planning process during which I learned how to communicate with group members to make decisions and how to ask for a donation when we needed

materials.
These projects opened my door to new experiences that I am very grateful for because it has taught me so many things that I never knew. One of the new experiences that I gained was when I organized a plan and drew out a sketch for our japanese garden in order to proceed with our ideas. During the planning period of our project, I learned that writing down and creating a sketch of our ideas and thoughts is a useful tool to help picture how we will make our plan a reality. At this time, it was also the first time I learned how to write a letter asking for a donation. I am grateful that I learned this skill because I used it again to ask for a donation of materials for our annual 4-H Demonstration Day which my club was chair of. The 4-H projects that I participated in gave me the opportunity to learn beyond my current knowledge about specific topics and gain beneficial life skills.