This year’s 4-H Winter Camp in Delta was great! It was definitely a highlight of my 4-H activities this year. Winter Camp was held on the weekend of January 22-24 in a perfect facility—Crosswoods Camp. Many traditional winter camp activities, like broomball, were featured this year, but other new ones were added as well. These included educational rotations such as “To Build A Fire” (with Jack London). I attended this and loved it. We learned how to build fires with only 2 matches, then roasted marshmallows over the fires on a stick.
The biggest activity this year was the “Power of Wind” turbine project. This was possible through a grant from 3M. We worked in groups to build the most efficient wind turbine out of a pre-determined set of materials. At the end, we had a competition to see which group’s turbine generated the most watts. We also wired them all together to see what our “wind farm” would produce. It was awesome and I learned a lot about wiring and how wind turbines are created, and how they produce electricity. We were told about the uses of wind energy and learned the different techniques for getting the most out of a turbine. Lots of “trial and error” experimentation came into play on the project. I like engineering and architecture, so I may use the information we learned—even in a future job. Working in groups was fun and taught us team work.
Everything from snowball fights to wind energy was fun, and that made camp awesome!