Each year 4-H'ers from around the country celebrate National 4-H Week held during October each year. Here are some ways you can celebrate National 4-H Week in your club, county and community.

Celebration

Create a media event by inviting the town (or school or county) to wear green and form a giant clover photo.

  • Have a reception at the courthouse, or downtown, or at the mall. Serve limeade!
  • Distribute green bottles of bubbles. Invite everyone to have a green bubble-blowing party and 4-H Week reception.
  • Have a green balloon day. Give away 4-H balloons.
  • Offer popcorn for anyone who comes into the MSU Extension office that week.
  • Serve mint ice cream! Have an ice cream social with 4-H’ers, county officials, and volunteers. Showcase youth projects and exhibits.
  • Select a national 4-H week baby! The first baby born during 4-H Week in the county (if you have a county hospital that delivers) is named the 4-H baby. Get sponsorship from local vendors for diapers, gas to carry baby home, milk/formula, flowers, baby clothes, etc. Give baby a 4-H membership card.
  • Have a National 4-H Week Street party under a big 4-H banner.
  • Have a car show. . . anything from 1914 on! After all, there have been a lot of changes in vehicles and 4-H since 1914.
  • Have an up-to-the-minute fashion show and 4-H Week Include an outfit from 1914 as a reminder of how 4-H has changed since 1914.
  • Have a gala premiere of your newest video (or slide set) of 4-H highlights from the past year.
  • Kick off 4-H Week with a Battle of the Bands. Invite everyone.
  • Have a 4-H scavenger hunt. Advertise a list of items (a real four-leaf clover, a 4-H enrollment card, the autograph of a 4-H volunteer, the autograph of a 4-H donor, a snapshot of a 4-H’er, etc.) The first person to bring all the correct items receives a nice donated prize.
  • End the week with your annual 4-H Awards Banquet. Give it a new twist with make your- own-omelet, make-a-crepe, world’s longest sandwich supper, late-night breakfast, chili cook-off, salad supper, fish fry, outdoor chicken barbeque, finger-food fellowship, spaghetti - 17 ways, the 4-H dinner, funniest 4-H video contest, 4-H academy awards, Unsolved 4-H Mysteries (with skits about 4-H’ers and leaders) a TV Guide party (with 4-H related spoofs from a variety of shows), or a Wheel-of-4-H Night where participants are chosen from the audience to guess and fill-in the blanks for major 4-H successes from the past year.
  • Ask local churches to acknowledge 4-H Sunday (October 1st) and 4-H members who are present.
  • Invite outstanding local 4-H alumni for an autograph-signing party.
  • Decorate 4-H members' lockers in green and white.
  • Host a bonfire and s'mores at the end of the week.

Media & Marketing

  • Provide the local newspaper with articles by members, volunteers, alumni and donors for a 4-H insert.
  • Select a dozen entries in a call for PSA’s on 4-H. Let the authors tape the spots for local radio stations.
  • Have a fortune cookie made, with a 4-H message inside each Distribute them in restaurants and in other public places.
  • Schedule 4-H members and/or adult leaders to present PTA and civic meeting programs.
  • Distribute a thought-for-the-day for each day of National 4-H Week. Send them to all the churches in your community, for enclosure in their bulletins.
  • Put a 4-H message or sticker on grocery bags or coffee sleeves.
  • Make 4-H badges or buttons to wear and distribute.
  • Get 4-H balloons. Distribute them everywhere!
  • Create banners to decorate the lamp posts down your town's main street.
  • Have a call for 4-H bumper sticker designs. Let a local printer or artist select an entry. Unveil and distribute the bumper stickers during 4-H week.
  • Initiate a 4-H’er of the Week photo feature during 4-H Week. Let a panel of volunteers select the featured 4-H’er using fair criteria and including all ages and interests.
  • Cover your community with 4-H posters! Encourage EVERY 4-H’er to bring a 4-H poster to the club meeting. Let a committee of 4-H’ers and volunteers be responsible for distributing signs in every business and public places.
  • Place 4-H promotional place mats in local restaurants. 
  • Use a local cable station to convey 4-H messages and announcements.
  • Fly a 4-H flag at school or at the town hall.
  • Radio contest: use questions based on 4-H history and 4-H today. Callers who give correct answers, win a prize. Use 4-H camp T-Shirts, 4-H pens and pencils, and other promotional trinkets.
  • Use the 4-H camp video or county 4-H videos in businesses with televisions that continually play.
  • Use 4-H promotional/educational exhibits at businesses, fairs, schools, banks and supermarkets.
  • Create window displays in local businesses.
  • Distribute 4-H appreciation items or 4-H survival kits to 4-H teacher leaders, school principals (green life savers, 4-H pencil, 4-H calendar, etc.)
  • Give a presentation at your local after school programs.
  • Ask local businesses to put 4-H is Great! Are You Into It! on their signs during the week.
  • Solicit billboard Select one to unveil during 4-H Week.
  • Have a two-way teen membership marathon. Include a fun-run race and a teen recruitment race. Plan a really special short trip or event for the top 10 recruiters and their new teen members. Let other teen members host the event and invite every teen who participated in the fun-run.

Try these Ideas

  • Use the school public address system to make announcements about 4-H Week events.
  • Provide refreshments in the faculty lounge and include a card or sign stating that it is National 4-H Week.
  • Fly your 4-H Flag (These can be ordered through 4-H Supply).
  • Design and make special buttons, tags, or posters to wear or post around
  • Plan a school entryway bulletin board around the 4-H Week theme, “Find Your Spark”.
  • Make a huge banner to fly in front of the school during 4-H Week.
  • Plan a green and white day. Have 4-H members (or student body) wear green and white to promote club recognition.
  • Make signs to put in car window stating “4-H Member on Board”
  • Put a poster on lockers of 4-H members that say “4-H Member”.
  • Distribute 4-H pencils to student body, attach a note “Get the lead out – Join 4-H”, or rulers with notes that say “4-H Rules”, or distribute erasers with a note “Don’t make a Mistake – Join 4-H!”, or distribute green and white mints with a tag attached “4-H is Mint for YOU”.
  • Have 4-H officers present green apples to teachers with a tag or note announcing National 4-H Week.
  • Decorate cafeteria tables with green and white helium balloons 4-H Put up a 4-H display in school foyer or library showing the various 4-H project books.
  • Contact businesses that have a marquee, lighted sign, or computer programmed Ask them to display a message about National 4-H Week.
  • Announce or put signs at local football stadiums for National 4-H Week.

Events and Activities:

  • Have a 4-H cookie-baking marathon and deliver cookies to police departments, teachers, school board members, fire departments, and other community services.
  • Have contests for T-Shirts, poster, bumper stickers, 4-H displays, PSA’s, essays, and feature stories. Use them!
  • Have a milk shake marathon or a taste-of-our-county event.
  • Have a 4-H Family Fun Night.
  • Have a 4-H Carnival.
  • Have a 4-H Family night. 
  • Have a 4-H Family Scavenger hunt.
  • Have a 4-H Family Cook-off.
  • Organize a 4-H Week committee for next year’s events!
  • Let 4-H’ers know that 4-H is big. It’s fun! It’s different! Include some of these meetings ideas to add some sparkle.

Club Meetings

  • Have an enrollment party at each meeting.
  • Invite non-4-H friends and family to the club meeting. 
  • Decorate 4-H member lockers at school. 
  • Have a reception for the principal and teachers.
  • Give a clover sticker to everyone you find smiling.
  • Distribute something 4-H’y for every bulletin board.
  • Distribute a list of celebrity 4-H alumni. Scramble the names or have them fill-in-the blanks.
  • Invite teen 4-H’ers and 4-H alumni to explain 4-H.
  • Give door prizes (4-H pencils, T-Shirts, etc.) by drawing completed enrollment cards.
  • Take a jar of green jelly beans to each meeting. Let members guess how many jelly beans are in the jar. Let the number equal the number of 4-H’ers in your county or in the state last year. Explain that it would take a certain number of jars to hold that many jelly beans.
  • Remember the people who make 4-H a success in your county.

Recognition for Donors & Other 4-H Supporters

  • 4-H’ers deliver green and white mints.
  • 4-H’ers write thank you notes.
  • 4-H’ers distribute thank you posters for windows.
  • 4-H’ers distribute 4-H t–shirts.
  • 4-H’ers distribute cookies.
  • Invite them to a donor-appreciation campfire!
  • 4-H’ers deliver original thank you poems or singing thank-you-grams.
  • Mail or deliver an audio or video cassette of 4-H’ers saying thank you.
  • Mail them a video tape of the past year’s4-H highlights.
  • 4-H’ers could grow or transplant shamrocks to deliver to donors and other supporters during 4-H Week.
  • Distribute 4-H pencils.
  • Have special ribbons made (rosettes are great!) that read 4-H VIP.
  • 4-H’ers make and deliver jars of green and white jelly beans.
  • Mail them a video (or even audio tape) of a massive standing ovation!!
  • 4-H’ers deliver 4-H calendars to supporters/sponsors.
  • Encourage your clubs to turn National 4-H Week into a memorable event. Use these ideas to trigger their creativity.
  • Recognizie 4-H members on sports teams at games during the week. 

As a Club

  • Make a quilt.
  • Make a flag or a banner.
  • Make clover-shaped cookies to deliver to shut-ins.
  • Present a skit.
  • Sing a song.
  • Have a reception for parents.
  • Do a service-learning activity.
  • Prepare a Invite the parents as guests.
  • Have a talent show. Invite friends, parents, and donors.
  • Do a service project.
  • Display the 4-H flag for the week.
  • Advertise a wear-green day. Distribute green and white mints to everyone who wears green that day; or distribute tickets to a fun 4-H event.

Last Minute Ideas

  • Take a potted plant to key supporters. Stick a paper 4-H clover on a florist stem in the pot.
  • Have a phone-a-thon. 4-H’ers phone all the donors and sponsors to say thanks.
  • Distribute books or packs of lifesavers with a note, You’ve been one of us this year! Thank you.
  • Distribute One Million Dollar candy bars with a note, You’re worth more than this. Thanks for being a friend to 4-H.
  • Add a 4-H Week message to every e-mail and written correspondence during the week.
  • Have everyone in the office answer the phone with Happy 4-H Week!
  • Honor an adult volunteer, teen leader, or donor.
  • Make cookies for the school custodians, secretaries, cafeteria staff, and bus drivers.
  • Prepare refreshments for the teachers’ lounge.
  • Decorate a bulletin board.
  • Present a thought-for-the-day over the intercom each morning.
  • Take a donor to lunch each day during 4-H Week. Recruit volunteers and co-workers to do the same. If possible, let 4-H’ers take a donor or volunteer to lunch, even if it’s in the school cafeteria.
  • Send sticks or packs of gum with notes attached, Thank for sticking with 4-H!
  • Ask volunteers to stop by the high schools where your teen 4-H’ers are. Deliver them a little care bag or a good luck with all our tests this week note and surprise. Sometimes schools will have office helpers put surprises in the lockers for you.