Energizing Your 4-H Club Meetings

April 21, 2023

Do your 4-H meetings or group activities feel like all work and no play? Learn quick and engaging activities to make your next meeting both fun and functional. Have fun and learn ways to help everyone participate at their own comfort level.

Video Transcript

Welcome everyone to our Michigan for H and volunteer webinar series that is titled energizing your four H club meeting. We're going to spend some time looking at how to make sure are for each group meetings and activities, have fun and are not all work, and no play and learn some engaging activities that you can use at your next meeting to be fun and functional. We want everyone to have fun and participate in their own comfort level. We are going to have the opportunity to practice some, share some activities with you. Feel free at any point in time to put any questions you may have in the chat. We will have time at the end once I turn the recording off to open up your mic and ask any additional questions that you may have. But we look forward to being part of this. I am Christina heavily. I'm an extension educator based in Clayton County. I knew use the pronouns. She her I am at our volunteer support team and I have Christie Ulster house with me today. I'm going to let her do a quick introduction to yeah. So hi everybody. I'm Christina asked her house. I am based in antrum County Up North, and I am also an extension educator. I supervise the district three for each staff, as well as also provide some support to our volunteer management and utilization practices. Right? So we're gonna get started here. So MSU Extension beliefs fully in the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. We know that human differences enrich our lives, working community, we embrace our responsibility to be a resource for all and are committed to providing progress to all segments, segments of our community. It's also important to understand the long-standing history and legacy of colonialism that has brought us to reside on the land and to seek our understanding in place with that history and land acknowledgment on the screen is one stack for that. Precedes going to put into the chat quick, short demographic survey, if you would please take a moment to fill that out, that helps us truly show that we are trying to serve are sort of the entire populations across the state of Michigan in different ways or across the country. So we hope you take a moment to fill that out and provide your demographics things. As I already shared, this is part of a webinar series that we're doing here in Michigan this year. We have already done it, two of them. And there are recordings available for the one on building the value of your four H club and energizing your four H club meetings. Those are directly on our volunteer wet on Webinar Series website to find those recordings are embedded. You can listen to them if you didn't attend those. If you are a person who happens to attend at least four of the webinars throughout the year. At the end of the year, you'll receive a certificate and certificate from us. We will be having three more of these in the fall, one in September, October, and November. And the topics will be related. Talking about forage resources, helping youth find our sparks and youth engagement and beforeEach experiences and more. The dates on those will be sat and late in early summer and that'll be started to be shared on the same page where the recordings are, but the acyl be shared out and through our social media and our forEach use ladders that county share. Alright, so ticket. With thinking about how we energize our club meetings. First, I want you to take a moment and look around your space that you are in right now. And think about the items that you can see around you. Look at them and think through what item could you use to help you facilitate an icebreaker in your group and how would you use it? Then you can type your answers into the chat. So type in what item that you have that you can see and how you might use it. So e.g. I. See a deck of cards near me, and I could use this to help sort club members into groups for an icebreaker. Or another idea would be to have members tell one thing about themselves for each number on the card that they draw it out of the deck. So if they draw ten, they'd tell ten things about themselves. That might be a simple icebreaker. Alright, so I see we've got someone that has puzzles near them. Someone mentioned a stress ball that you can pass it around and have the students introduce themselves. Stamps for talking about pen pals with another club or county. Sure, Yeah, Kate creating that cross county collaboration and getting to know each other. Plato with having members create an object that represents what diversity is to them. Connect forward. I have a game day, a squishy ball to introduce her. Tell, tell about their favorite thing is you're tossing the ball around. Awesome ideas. Give it another second and see if anyone else has anything that they want to. They can see or type in. I have getting those to have youth create to write something about themselves and pass it around liquid and a gas which you throughout that. Yeah, these are all really great ways and simple things that you can have a laptop or phone to create a Kahoot or a fun quiz game. Yes, That is awesome. So icebreakers and energizers don't have to use a lot of supplies. They don't have to be very elaborate. They can be just simple things and use things that you might already have lying around your space or in use at club meetings. So an important part of building a strong for each club or group is to make sure that each person knows everybody else in the group. Volunteers and members need to be able to call each other by name and they need to feel comfortable working and learning with each other. And so by incorporating recreation and group building activities into your meetings, you can accomplish both of those goals. What are some reasons why energizers and icebreakers should be included in club meetings. So there's just a few on the screen. So it can be fun. It can help build community or inclusion. It can provide some comedic relief and stress relief for your club meetings. It can help wake people up and energize them. It can also help to develop leadership skills and the youth and build excitement and comfort within your club meetings. Are there any other reasons that you can think of as to why energizers and icebreakers are important for your club meetings. And if you can think of anything, type them into the chat. So why would you want to incorporate energizers and icebreakers into your club? Yes. That feeling of belonging and connection? Yeah. Yeah. Getting getting people engaged, having the older members interact with the younger members? Yes. Practice public speaking. Bringing focus to the meeting to start, yes. As everyone's getting getting there and chatting, you can get get their attention pulled into the meeting. Finding commonality is that they have something to talk about, yes. Building those common bonds and goals. So icebreakers and energizers and recreation should provide enjoyment and relaxation for all your participants. They should provide that opportunity to build that good group spirit and connection and cooperation in the meetings and all clubs should all come. Meetings should include at least 15 to 20 min of group building activities. So think about when you could build that into your club meetings. Group building is an important key that can unlock some of those social barriers, like we mentioned, finding commonalities and social barriers that people build around themselves for protection. And it also provides us an excuse to enjoy learning, sharing, respecting and growing and the life skills. The members of our forEach clubs, energizers and icebreakers can refresh and invest our spirits with excitement and renews energy for creativity and problem-solving and clarity and fresh ideas for our clubs. And then also advertisers, icebreakers really helped to look at that spark piece and we've really started to focus on how to help you find there Spark. Spark is a passion for a self-identified interests or scale, or capacity that lights up buyer in a young person's life, providing them energy, joy, purpose, and goal setting. Having energizing meanings does not necessarily mean that youth will find their spark through those, but it makes your meetings more engaging and fun so you'd want to come to them. However it fits. This all fits into the forage thrive model because these types of activities helped build relationships with others and connect in that connection to the youth engagement piece. When you find their spark and have that belonging it builds relationship. You sparks are essential of our essential ingredient of thriving. Having a spark or sparks helps gives a young person direction. And when they have fun in their club meetings are more likely to find that. Research has revealed the five dimensions of developmental relationships, the expression of care through listening, warmth, and dependability. Second, the challenging growth by Youth Accountability, expecting them to do their best and helping them reflect on failures. Three, provide support by empowering and advocating for youth, as well as helping them navigate situations and system in setting appropriate boundaries for sharing power through inclusion, respect collaboration, and use adult partnership. And five, expanding possibilities by exposing youth to new ideas and opportunities and connecting to others, help them reach their goals. We build those icebreakers and energizers. We're helping to build those form those developmental relationship that will help you find those sparks and navigate those different pieces and help them thrive for success. Okay, sorry, can find them. You track where my mouse was. Alright, so when you are going into doing energizers and icebreakers in your group. One tip is to make sure to use creative ways to split people into groups. E.g. a, couple of ways you could use a b by birth month, or alphabetical first, initial, if you're counting or alternating grouping methods to arrange youth, you want to avoid grouping youth by assumed characteristics or observational traits such as gender, race, religion, or national heritage. And so you could have people choose their own group by giving them a set number of options, like favorite color or a season of the year. If you're looking at grouping them by food or they're for each project. Any of those different methods to work on putting you into groups as they work through your energizers and icebreakers. Building and strengthening relationships is a key component of successful clubs and the usage of icebreakers, games and activities is an important aspect. One could think this only needs to happen at the beginning of the year. But these types of activities help welcome new members, develop a group bond, reinforce the importance of the for-each club being a safe environment and established group identity. To help with the relationship building and formation of group identity, it's important to keep a few tips in mind. Set firm expectations regarding behavior to ensure fun, safe, and play, and providing participants from getting carried away. As a youth and the group help create these expectations. Help them buy into uptake some time to have them set their group expectations for the year, and then revisit them at each meeting. Be clear on what instructions are being given that you'd need to listen so they understand how to play or participate in the activity. So once the activity starts, everyone is on the same page. Stress the importance of respecting one another's ideas and contributions. That this is just as important for the other leaders in your common parents that they may be participating. It's not just the youth. If the parents, other leaders, they understand the importance of respecting one another's ideas and contributions to build an environment where everyone is encouraging others. In the beginning, you may want to start with quieter type games as the group is getting to know one another and then move to more high-energy type activities in your own clubs as you thought about building relationships, building what are some tips that you've considered? I'm gonna give everyone a minute or two to think if they have any tips that they'd like to share with one another. As we move forward. If you have any additional texts that you think are important when you're doing around relationship building type activities. Feel free to please put them in the chat. So we're gonna do a little practice activity now, I'm modifying this to give you a taste of what it's like. But I'm going to have you get up and move a little bit in your own spaces. But one way to build some relationships and commonalities and your group is to start out with doing a mini scavenger hunt type game. In an actual forage club, I would put people in groups and head of the list of items that need to find and do it in multiple rounds. And each round ends when the first team comes back with Alvin items you said. And then I would ask them questions about who? Some team-building questions like, was there someone who? Thought through how we might find these and just really try and reflect on it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you 2 min. I'm going to give you a list of items that I want to see who they can be found. And then once you find those items, I want you to come back and put into the chat, saying done. And we will then have a quick reflection on it. So I'd like you to see that X 2 min, who can find a phone, a coffee mug, or a pen and notebook, a water bottle, and car keys. I'm also putting them in the chat for you. Those are all I had in my office desk. I will say most of them are on my office desk also. I didn't I don't currently have a coffee mug on my desk because I had taken it off my desk ticket wash. Let's morning. But these are things that are I was trying to think of easy things for you to find right now. But when you think about while you're foraged clubs settings are, you could think about a variety of different little mini scavenger hunts that you send the teams out to fight. It could be if you happen to be in a place that has some outside space, you could think about outside thing. That's really, this is allowing the group to work together to see how fast they can find these items and doing it in multiple rounds. If I was doing this with a group setting, I would have them do give them a list, have them come see, you can come back first. And then I'll give it a new list to everyone. And I give like three or four lists to have them come back. And then we would talk about at the end, what was engaging for them, what was fun? The important part of when you wrap up energizer and icebreaker type games. It's due the next step and make sure there's some sort of reflection with it to have them think about things that might have learned that helps them make that connection to the life skills that could have been happening with them experience. So thanks for taking a minute to participate with us. We're trying to build some of those examples with you also. Yeah, I think it works through serum tumor had to have them find the ingredients to attempt to make bij and then did it again. So many things that you can do face-to-face. You just have to think on how you modify them in zoom a little bit and it's not always easy. It doesn't always allow for people enjoy that face-to-face Atmos, but sometimes having that, being able to modify it through Zoom works really well. So thank you for sharing. Yeah, so another key aspect of relationship building is trust. So creating a level of trust is key in helping youth to thrive. And the usage of energizing activities can help build that trust. And that'll strengthen youth sense of belonging and connection and those developmental relationships in your club. At teams and clubs seldom thrive when trust is missing. A safe atmosphere allows members to experience healthy emotional risks to contribute and be part of the club. They need to discover how they fit into the club, voice their opinions, and they can help achieve the club, help the club to achieve common goals. To build this level of trust and the club build in games and activities that focus on trust-building. Once the club has built a foundation that can allow the youth to stretch their comfort zone. So we are going to do an activity called cross the line. So like the previous activity, this is also modified for use in this webinar in a club setting. Because it's called crystalline. You're gonna be like crossing a line. And I would, in a physical setting, consider your space where you could set up a line and divide sides of the room. You're going to see the virtual option on the next slide in a minute. And you would have participants move around the room depending on the responses that you'll see in this activity. So for the purpose of the webinar, you're going to use the annotate feature in Zoom. So you should be able to find the feature in the Zoom ribbon depending on the device you're using, this could be a pencil icon or the ribbon at the top or bottom of your screen depending on where that is located. If you can find the annotate feature and then go ahead and give it a try it out a second to mark a stamp or a mark or a pencil mark on this screen. People figuring it out. Alright? Alright, so I'm going to clear all the drawings for a second. And then so now that we've practiced the annotations, you're going to after, after I say each of the following phrases you're going to mark on the screen whether you agree or disagree, you can mark anywhere on the screen. So the line in the middle of the screen, we'll divide that, divides it into two different sections. If you feel very strongly about agreeing to this statement, you're going to mark all the way towards agree, neutral or unsure about the statement or unsure how you feel about it. You're going to mark more towards the middle and then strongly disagree on the disagree side. If you disagree with this statement. So mark the area that best represents how you feel about the statement. So e.g. if I say hugging my boss or superior and I mark by agree, that means that I'm comfortable with hugging my boss or superior. If I mark towards the middle, I might not have strong feelings about it. And if I marked by disagree, that means that I am uncomfortable with the idea of hugging my boss. So there's no right or wrong answers here. And answers are going to vary from person to person. Alright? Any questions about those instructions? Okay. So the first and I'm going to clear the drawings the second. Alright, so the first phrase is friends stopped by with no notice. And so again, you're going to mark towards disagree the middle or agree how comfortable you are with that. We have some people on the Greek side, some people may disagree side and at varying levels of comfort level within that. So I'm closer to the middle and some on the outsides. Alright, I'm going to clear those and we'll move on to the next one. So a club, a member asks you for your cell phone number. And again, we have people on all sides of the spectrum and sort of towards the middle. Clear him, do the next one. Alright, a friend hugs you. Yeah. So this one, we have more people on the Greek side are a little bit neutral. All right, I'm going to clear that one. So a family is 15 min late to your club meeting. Again, this is how comfortable are you agree or disagree? A little bit more in the middle. On either side? I'm going to add secondary question to that one. A sent you a message that they weren't gonna be 15 min late. And I can clear it clear out. Oh, sorry, I clicked on that and some people start my thing. Yeah. And how that can change. All right. So you're talking with parents from the club and they start gossiping about another family in the club. Yeah. Sorry, towards statistically and varying levels of disagree. A youth member virus supplies for their project without asking. Yeah, so again, varying levels there. A teen wants to lead the next for each meeting. Yeah. Mostly agrees that time or in the middle. Yeah. And then finally, a club member wants to send you a request on Facebook. Variety. Some degree, some new neutral, lots of disagree. Alright, so I'm going to clear the drawings for this, but what are some of the things that you noticed about the responses? So you can type that into the chat. Any observations? Wondered about age groups, we all work with the speed of the answer, yes, some people who were very quick, some people had to think about it for a little bit. Yeah, there were varying degrees. So some not everybody all had the same agreement agreement or even agreement level, depending on if if everybody was on one side, not everybody has that same same level of degree. Yeah. Anything else? Yeah. Some of the questions are highly subjective, so some kind of have a knee-jerk reaction, but yeah, giving thought our understanding to the situation or maybe if there were more specifics given, your answer might change depending on the situation. Yeah. Everyone's got their own comfort zone and age is dependent on the answers. Maybe what you do for a living, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of variables that can, can play into how people might want to respond to these. Yeah, so this activity could be used to build trust by finding commonalities amongst your club members where they might agree or disagree on certain aspects. But when you have members split across the board or maybe on opposite sides of the board. You can also use this activity to talk about our differences. Talk about those comfort zones and those comfort levels that everyone has, has different degrees and variation on what they are okay with. And take the opportunity to celebrate those differences. Discussing how both are commonalities and differences make us unique and contribute to building a stronger group. Um, help the building each other up and complementing each other's strengths and challenges. So this activity is a good way to also discuss our boundaries and how we can build trust by getting to know and understand each other's boundaries within the club. And the follow-up e-mail you'll be receiving the full directions for this activity. That helps some examples that Christy used to have you think about but agree and disagree, but also really encourages you to think about what are the pieces that you need to think about, agree and disagree within your Cloud if you're trying to build those commonalities and trust, they might be totally different than what is provided, but we'll give you that resource in the follow-up email tomorrow. It was brought up in the beginning that someone made the comment about against youth. The opportunity to leave things on. Youth voice really fits into this whole piece of energizers and icebreakers to developmental relationships between youth and adults are important aspect of for each program, developmental relations began by creating a secure attachment Trina for each member and adult volunteer, reflected in a neutral warmth, respect and trust, developmental relations. Ships also increased in complexity over, over time. As youth develop their needs with them, the relationship will likely change to reflect their increasing maturity and ability. As such, healthy developmental relationship, power over time, developmental relationships with younger youth are typically high adult driven and determined. As youth adult partnership relationships across the adolescent years come into play, do you take more and more power? However, the young person's increasing competency, personal autonomy and decision-making and in identity formation. As youth grow and effective for each program reflects their developmental changes through development, developmentally appropriate activities, relationships with youth, and giving them more and more opportunities to take on a leadership role within your club experiences. It might be dependent on the relationships that they formed, how they feel, and it is different with each member, but it's always about how do we get youth voice and get youth involved in their experiences and when we build those energizers and icebreakers, we're also building relationships with that to help build their level of where they're are more and more comfortable to have a voice and start to be engaged in the club and taking on leadership roles. So as you consider holding icebreakers and energizers in your club, incorporating these activities as a facilitator for the activities, it's important to be prepared and to completely understand the steps involved. That clear directions can be given. If icebreakers require a large group to split that group into smaller groups to do the icebreaker energizer. It's really important to, or it's recommended to split that the youth into those groups first and then give you instructions. If it's done in the reverse manner, you could be more focused on who's gonna be in their group and they might miss the directions. If possible, encourage facilitators and adults that are in your club meetings to join and engage in the activities with the youth. So this can build a sense of common, of community amongst all the participants and encourage engagement in your club. So a few other tips for being prepared for success is to be prepared for the icebreaker energizer that you want to hold in your club meetings, build a toolbox of supplies. So we started off the webinar with looking at what are some easy, simple things that you have lying around that you could potentially grab and use. But building a toolbox of supplies for things that might be common in the activities that you wanna do can help. So that, that creates that grab-and-go box of stuff and is very easy than to be like, ooh, I'm just going to grab this for my club meeting and I can do whatever I want it to with whatever supplies I have. Again, as a facilitator, join in the fun or mirror the engagement of the youth. So using e.g. uses, use ourselves as examples or give examples to start off the icebreakers. How you're joining, joining in in that activity. Consider that. Also another tip is to not force people to join our participate if they don't feel comfortable participating, allowing space for for that it is okay if they're not feeling comfortable to sit off to the side for that activity. Also, stop the activity if people are enjoying it or if the activity is not going well. Sometimes, sometimes it doesn't go well, or our people aren't responding like you think they might. And so it's okay to just stop it and move on or try it and adapt to a different activity. And also too, you may want to consider how you are reducing barriers between youth and adults through, through the activity. So what are, you can type into the chat? What are some items that you might want to keep in your toolbox and disconnect be the physical toolbox of supplies are your mental toolbox as to how you prepare for your energizers and icebreakers and your club. So as people are typing, I can share one of the things that I tend to do when I'm doing icebreaker, Preparing for doing icebreakers, energizers is I do think through what ahead of time, what responses I might give or how to use as an example for the icebreaker to help people understand what the activity might be doing. Some of the things that I keep it directly in my toolbox of supplies to bring with me is I always have Plato and I have pedestals, and I have paper. And I have a ball. And I have a beach ball that actually have numbers on each of the different colors of it. I also have been at this beach balls. And yeah. So yeah, it's considering the different ages and abilities of the youth. Yes. The number of youth that are gonna be there that day. Yeah. How you're going to adapt the activity for teens versus clover buds or if you have both participating in the activity, how how you handle the age? Ages. Yeah. And then having different sticky notes, the ball pen. Pen or paper? Pencils? Yeah. Depending on the activity, if you're doing more games are different. Icebreakers? Yeah. Having balloons, et cetera. Yeah. Hello is mine because I have found balloons are great when things haven't been going well. Stopping the activity, it's not going well. I can pull balloon out and come up with some different activities that you can do sometimes? Yeah. Yeah. I do the same thing with like paper paper and pencils and lots of like engineering icebreakers in my back pocket. Can do with paper. Yeah. Yeah. Aware of allergies? Yeah. But candy candy incentive? Yes. Yes. A very popular icebreakers to have kids like pig, you know, how many m and pick a handful of M&Ms and then. Depending on the color that they've grabbed or how many, how many they've grabbed, you know, having them share share something related to that as well. So yes, using candy as part of your energizers are icebreakers can help. So we have one more activity that we're going to do with you to help wrap up and give you one more tool for your toolboxes is another one that can vary that we've modified and is very easy to actually do over Zoom. But I'm hoping that each of you could get a piece of paper and a writing utensil. And I'm going to do an activity called rami or leader. And we're going to, it looks at how we can have different perceptions are different points of view. And it can have a, lead us to a conversation, especially if you've been struggling with people not understanding different views in your club or why people at different activities or different things. This activity can help them. I'll see how that can come together. And it also is a pretty quick and simple one. So if you have a pen and paper next to you, if you could just please put down in the chat so I know that I can start giving the directions. Alright, thank you for those that already. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to describe a drawing of an alien that I have actually on the very next slide. Without seeing the dry the drawing, I want you to draw the alien as I describe it, you may not ask any questions. And if I was doing this face-to-face, I would also say, you're not allowed to talk to anyone else, but that's easier when you're doing it over Zoom stuff. I will read each statement twice. The alien has a round head. The alien has a round head. The alien has two triangular shaped stacked ears sticking out on each side of its head. The alien has two triangular shaped stacked ears sticking out on each side of its head. The alien has two shaded oval eyes near the top of its head. The alien has two shaded oval eyes near the top of its head. There is a large triangular nose in-between the eyes pointed downward. There is a large triangular nose in-between the eyes pointed downward. The alien has a half oval shaped mouth. The alien has a half oval shaped mouth. The alien has two curly hair on the top of its head. The alien has two curly antenna is on the top of its head. The alien has three arms on each side of its body. The middle arms are longer than the top and bottom ours. The alien has three arms on each side of its body. The middle arms are longer than the top and bottom ours. Each arm has a circular wrist on the end of it. Each arm has a circular wrist on the end of each arm has to feelers extending from the wrist. Each arm has to feelers extending from the rest. There is a small square object being held between each pair of feelers. There is a small square object being held between each pair of feelers. There is one oval shaped foot on each side of the aliens body. The left foot has three toes shaped like circular circles. And the right foot has four toes, shapes like circles. There's one oval shaped foot on each side of the aliens body. The left foot has three toes shapes like circles. And the right foot has four toes shapes like circles. That was the last instruction. So if you were doing this in a group setting, you would have, in your face-to-face, you'd have everyone's shoulder aliens off to each other and start to look at them. And here is what my alien looks like that I just shared with you. So who has an alien? Exactly like mine, alien. Anyone have one? You can feel free to put that in the chat. That's okay because you all had to listen to how I said it. We all interpret things a little bit differently on what I might've said. We might have made them different sizes. We might have heard something slightly different. We all have those different perception. So this activity lead to go through that. In your follow-up email, you're going to receive the instructions for it and it gives each one of these steps. It has a picture of what you could share with people and gives you some questions you can ask at the end to kind of reflect on it. So that was throughout today's training, we wanted to take give you some activities. And it's simple quick ones that can be used as icebreakers and energizers. And they're just those ways to build into pieces. We do in addition to what we shared with you today on this slide now is a whole list of resources of where there's a bunch of other ideas. There's some links with lots of different icebreakers and a variety of different ways to do it. We're gonna put that list into the chat for you. You'll get it in our follow-up email and have that opportunity to pick him through. I will share the very last two analysts are books that you can purchase. I gave you the Amazon Linux. There's a variety of other places together that do provide a lot of different activities and are some of my favorite ones to utilize. Wrap up today. I really first I want to thank everyone for coming. When you close out of this Zoom, you're gonna get an opportunity to fill out a quick evaluation if you could please consider doing that. We'll also put it into the chat here in a second. We appreciate you coming. I am going to stop the recording now because I want to open it up. If anyone wants to share some ideas they have or wants to open their bike and talk and ask specific questions.