School Enrichment

Thirteen projects are available for youth grades 2nd through 6th. Projects may consist of kits for the classroom, teacher materials, and/or student material and resources needed to carry out the project.

Please sign up for projects by sending an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick Please include the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information

Garbology (2nd and 3rd Grade)

What can kids do to help reduce garbage? Where do we get garbage? What do we do with it? These are all questions that your kids might be asking themselves. Help them find the answers when they explore the project Garbology! This solid waste management curriculum is designed to help children become aware of garbage and realize that waste doesn’t magically disappear once it hits the trash barrel. The activities in this project lead to action and commitment on the part of the student.

Activities have been grouped under the following topics:

• What is Trash?
• Where does it come from?
• Where does it go?
• What can we do about it?!!

Materials: Teacher’s Guide

If you would like to sign up for Garbology, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Sun's Up! Cover Up! (2nd through 6th Grade)

Everybody loves a sunny day. Especially kids. When the sun comes out, they can hardly wait to go outside and swim, or jump rope, or ride a bike, or go for a picnic. The sun can be good for us in that it makes the plants grow and help make vitamin D, which is good for our health.

But, it can also be bad for us in that too much exposure to the sun can cause skin cancer. We need to teach kids how they can be safe in the sun and still have fun.

This project will help kids learn about the dangers of the sun and teach them sun-smart behavior.

Materials: Sun’s Up! Cover Up! Kit

If you would like to sign up for Sun's Up! Cover Up!, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Talking with TJ (2nd through 4th Grade)

Talking with TJ is a new and exciting program to help your students work and play together. The program is an entertaining and fun way for children to learn basic skills in three areas related to cooperation and teamwork:

1. Making group plans.
2. Appreciating differences and including people. 3. Playing as a cooperative team in competitive situations.

TJ is a girl in a wheelchair who helps kids with their problems. TJ is a fun-loving kid whose disability is only one part of who she is. TJ is a DeeJay. TJ uses her radio talk show to help kids through tough times and situations.

Three video stories are the centerpiece of the Talking With TJ Teamwork Series. Each episode shows a group of kids solving a problem with TJ’s help. The videotape also includes a preview of the series to be shown before the program begins and four “how-to” segments to guide you in carrying out the program. The video stories and preview are closed-captioned for children who are hearing-impaired.

If you would like to sign up for Talking with TJ, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Severe Weather Safety 2nd through 6th Grade)

Surviving severe weather conditions in Nebraska, the United States and the world requires that our citizens and communities be both educated and prepared before the outbreak of natural disasters.

The Severe Weather Safety Project is intended to both educate and prepare children, second through sixth grade. Not only will children learn how to survive a severe weather event, but also what causes severe weather.

The Severe Weather Safety Project comes with a Severe Weather Information Kit. The kit contains many different kinds of educational tools. Several books are included that range from simple experiments to pictorials of weather and severe weather phenomena. Video topics include preparing to deal with severe weather and why severe weather events occur.

Materials: Severe Weather Information Kit

If you would like to sign up for Severe Weather Safety, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Embryology (3rd Grade)

Embryology is an exciting, wonderful miracle of nature. Students will have the opportunity to experience it first hand right in their own classrooms.

They will learn the stages of growth from fertilization to the actual hatching of the chicks. This project will raise the children’s natural curiosity and raise many questions that can be directly linked to our own lives.

This project will teach children not only about birth, but also how nature is a sometimes unexplainable world. The kids will love the chicks and all the excitement that goes with them.

Materials: Resources Manual, Fertile Eggs, Incubator, Videotapes may be ordered

If you would like to sign up for Embryology please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Grow Your Own Bacteria (3rd and 4th Grade)

Have you ever thought about how many germs there are on a quarter? Or on your own hands? Students may be asking you if they can wash their hands after finishing this project.

They will learn basic personal hygiene and the benefits of cleanliness while participating in this project. Students will inoculate petri dishes with ten different bacteria and check their growth after a short period of time.

If you’ve been trying to teach how important it is to be clean, here is a great resource!

Materials: Teacher’s Manual, Petri Dishes, Incubator

If you would like to sign up for Grow Your Own Bacteria, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Care and Prepare (3rd through 6th Grade)

How many of your students go home from school to an empty house? Do they have to fix after school snacks by themselves? Are these kids ready for self-care?

During recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of children staying home alone and caring for themselves. Care and Prepare is a program designed for that child who is home alone to accept responsibilities and care for themselves.

The project is presented in a three part course:

Part 1: Accepting the Challenge of Being Home Alone

Part 2: Handling Emergency Situations

Part 3: Activity Options

The project gives parents the opportunity to take a look at rules and responsibilities that a child may have by forming a contract with the child.

Materials: Student manual, Family Self-Care Contract, Certificate of completion, Parent Newsletters

If you would like to sign up for Care and Prepare, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

On Your Own In Rural America (3rd through 6th Grade)

Many farm kids are home alone just like their counterparts in town. Do they know what to do in an emergency? Do kids that live in town know what to do when they visit the farm? Do they know what equipment they should stay away from? Living on a farm can be very dangerous, especially when you are on your own.

This project is very similar to the School Enrichment Project “Care and Prepare”. However, this project focuses on some aspects of being alone on the farm and ways to prevent farm accidents.

The program is presented in three sections:

Section 1: Are You Ready for Self-Care?

Section 2: Safety Counts

Section 3: Snack Attack

On Your Own in Rural America goes through some very specific situations that kids may face when they are home alone. The handbook is designed so that parents can take an active role in helping the child prepare to be home alone.

Materials: Teacher’s Guide, Family Handbook, Video, Parent Newsletters

If you would like to sign up for On Your Own in Rural America, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Blue Sky Below My Feet (5th Grade)

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...BLAST-OFF ... to new adventures in learning that link space-age technology to the everyday interests of youth.

Space has always made students curious about what may be out there. This project takes them through three subject areas that may answer some of their questions about the unknown. They are:

Unit 1: Gravity and Forces

Unit 2: Fibers and Fabrics

Unit 3: Food and Nutrition

This project will allow students the opportunity to learn about space with hands-on experiments. They will be able to try space food and allow their imaginations to run wild with many other activities.

Materials: Teacher’s Guide, Mission Manual, Space Food, Video Series

If you would like to sign up for Blue Sky Below My Feet , please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Folk Arts (5th and 6th Grade)

Folk Arts helps young people understand the folk arts of their families and communities. In the growing diversity of our American “neighborhood”, this project seeks to help participants learn about themselves and others through folk arts.

Folk Arts, produced by Nebraska 4-H Youth Development with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council, is geared to upper elementary students.

Folk Arts are:

• arts through which groups of people maintain and pass on their way of life.
• traditional and have a history.
• learned from another person by observation and example.
• often complex and sophisticated.
• old and new at the same time.

Enjoy the wonderful experience of helping young people appreciate beauty and diversity as they develop respect for traditional ways of life.

Materials: Teacher’s Guided, Reproducible Resource Sheets

If you would like to sign up for Folk Arts, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

The Waste Stream (5th and 6th Grade)

Can you imagine – One day you awaken to your door bell. You answer the door and there before you is your garbage man. “Sorry but our dump is closed, there is no more room for your trash. We are returning it to you. It’s now your responsibility.”

But... But you’ve always taken it before! More and more communities are being faced with the question, “What do we do with our garbage?” Welcome to Sludge Falls, U.S.A.!

Sludge Falls could be your community. Help children learn about our waste stream and what they can do about it.

The project is in newspaper form divided into 5 units:

Unit 1: The Waste Story: An Overview

Unit 2: Solid Waste

Unit 3: Waste Water

Unit 4: Hazardous Waste

Unit 5: Waste: Effects on the Environment

Materials: Teacher’s Guide, Student Newspaper, Video–5 Units

If you would like to sign up for The Waste Stream, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

Leafing Out (5th and 6th Grade)

Many of the world’s forests are threatened. In some counties, tropical rainforests are being destroyed rapidly. In the United States, many people are concerned about the harvesting of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.

Yet for all the news about the destruction and devastation of these forests, some of our most threatened forests may be the ones in our own backyard - the community forests.

Few people understand that the trees along the street or in yard or park are part of a unique ecosystem in w2hich trees, animals, buildings and people interact - a community forest.

Students in the Leafing Out project experience hands-on learning opportunities that will help them explore the nature of trees and community forests. Much of the learning in this project will come as students conduct their own research and investigate their local community forest.

Leafing Out consists of five sections:

1. Trees in My World and Beyond
2. Working Trees
3. Growing Up Green
4. The Concrete Forest
5. Forever Green

Materials: Leafing Out Manual

If you would like to sign up for Leafing Out, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.

The Green Food Factory (6th Grade)

Agriculture is an industry, an industry upon which this nation is built. The exciting thing about agriculture is that every student can relate to it. Whether the students live on farms or on the fifth floor of an apartment building in a large city, agriculture affects them.

This project focuses on the production and use of crops in agriculture. Crops are referred to as plants which are grown and harvested for a profit or sustenance. The crops included in the project are corn, wheat, soybeans, and dry beans.

From all the crops grown in this nation, the crops for this project were chosen because of the vast quantities in which they are produced and the diversity of their uses. In Nebraska these crops are very important to Agriculture.

The Green Food Factory will help students learn about Agriculture on a hands-on basis. The Miracle of Corn tape will be an exciting new learning experience.

Materials: Teacher’s Guide, Student Newspaper, Miracle of Corn Tape, Wheat Science tape, Bread in a Bag.

If you would like to sign up for the The Green Food Factory, please send an e-mail to Rhonda Herrick including the name of the project, starting date, number of students and your contact information.