Outreach programs offered by University Cooperative Extension each year touch thousands of children in Delaware. In 4-H clubs, summer camps, school visits, after-school activities and numerous other projects, extension specialists and educators help youngsters appreciate the interconnectedness of everything in nature.

Some kids explore the worlds of bees, worms and butterflies. Others find out where food really comes from and how it gets from field to fork. Still others delve into techniques that keep our water supply pure and our soil clean and investigate how these two issues are related. Most of all, students develop an understanding of the realities of the natural world, how fragile it is and what they can do to help preserve it.

Extension youth education seeks to change the behavior of the next generation. Using hands-on, interactive projects designed to give youngsters broad-based understanding of complicated issues, extension programs demonstrate the relationship of these issues to the human population. The knowledge gained can change children's attitudes and behavior as future citizens, and, even more, it can be shared with their families, their schoolmates and their communities to ensure a better world.

The UD Master Gardener Program offers a hands-on version for children in kindergarten through fourth grade. Designed to enhance Delaware's statewide standards for science education, as well as encourage children to take an early interest in ecology and gardening, the Junior Gardener Program features such lessons as "Butterflies: Flowers That Fly," "Taming the Wild Ivy," "Insect Detectives" and "The Magic of Soil." Each lesson serves as an easy-to-understand introduction to the natural world and is adaptable to the abilities and age level of any classroom situation.

In "Trees Big and Small," youngsters practice the scientific methods of observation, comparison and classification. They also learn how to identify leaves and to recognize the role plants play in sustaining life. "Spring Bulbs for All Seasons," a four-part workshop that begins in fall with lessons on planting bulbs, concludes in the spring when the flowers bloom.

"The Junior Gardener Program provides a hands-on environmental and horticultural experience for children in elementary schools and other settings, such as day camps and child-care facilities," says Jo Mercer, extension educator for horticulture and environmental science. "It is taught by UD Extension Master Gardener volunteers, who are trained to take gardening education to the public."

Although very new, the Junior Gardener Program has met with tremendous success, Mercer says. In only six weeks last spring, lessons reached 1,757 students from 85 classrooms in 26 schools throughout New Castle County.

Getting a taste of farming

Ask the average kid where corn comes from, and she'll probably say "the supermarket." Ask a member of the Boys and Girls Club of Sussex in southern Delaware, and the answer is likely to include such specific terms as "water," "soil" and "photosynthesis."

In a joint effort between the Boys and Girls Clubs and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, youngsters learn where their food really comes from and how much time and effort farmers put into growing it. The Growing Project agricultural education program creates a group of 9- to 12-year-olds who have raised and tasted the fruits of their own labors.

Jay Windsor, Cooperative Extension educator, and Brian Hearn, research associate, both based at UD's Research and Education Center in Georgetown, spend part of their summers teaching short classroom lessons in combination with actual fieldwork in a garden established for the purpose at the Boys and Girls Club in Milford, Del.

Children adopt plants in the garden and care for them from mid-June to mid-August. They record such data as height and width growth over the nine weeks, as well as tracking rainfall and other measurements. Later, they learn how to input this data and make spreadsheets graphing their results.

The best part comes at the end of the program, when the novice farmers harvest and eat their bounty, director Mark Isaacs says.

"These kids take great pride and feel real satisfaction in eating something they have grown," says Isaacs, who helped initiate the joint program five years ago. "They go away with firsthand experience about how their food is grown, because they have done it--and, they won't soon forget."

A bug's eye view of research

Talented high-school-age entomologists and wildlife ecologists get a close-up view of the College's insect and wildlife research methods and opportunities for study through the Entomology and Applied Ecology Visiting Youth Scholar program.

Two visiting youth scholars are chosen each year to complete research under the tutelage of Susan Whitney, extension specialist for pesticides, and Jake Bowman, assistant professor of wildlife ecology. The scholar award includes an all-expenses-paid trip to campus, accommodations and two days spent meeting with scientists and experiencing the breadth of university-level entomology research and studies. The teenage scholars participate in classes, ask questions of University experts and, most of all, get to know UD faculty and students.

"The emphasis of the program is appreciation of the ecosystem and wildlife conservation," Whitney says. "Our first scholar, in 1999, was conducting research on controlling termites with a fungus. Since the fungus was a pathogen, he couldn't have completed it without the sponsorship of a qualified scientist. I agreed to help, answered his questions, reviewed his project results and made suggestions for improvement."

  Hetty Francke dumps a pile of compost on the table, reaches into the mess and issues a fat, red earthworm to each 4-H camper. As the worms squirm and slither in their hands, the kids say they feel either really brave or really grossed out. "Mine is very wet," reports one small worm-wrangler.

Now that she has their attention, Francke reveals her main message: When we recycle kitchen wastes, we create compost, the richest of fertilizers for home gardens. "I love explaining how worms play a big role in making compost for nature's recycling plan," she says.

Francke, a master gardener for Cooperative Extension since 1987, became a designated master composter seven years ago. A volunteer, she visits elementary schools and camp groups with her worms three or four days a week, teaching hundreds of children about the importance of composting and recycling.

"Composting helps the environment by changing waste into nutrients that return to enrich the soil," Francke tells her students. "The worms can be fed all kinds of kitchen wastes, from coffee grounds to banana skins. They gobble it all up and turn it from waste to compost, a precious resource."

"It did creep me out when we flipped over the decomposed material and there were worms," a newly converted young composter admits, "but it's very interesting."

Dewey Caron, professor of entomology, master beekeeper and UD extension entomologist, introduces children to the fine art of beekeeping with his traveling road show of observation beehives. The hives, used for learning about bees as far back as ancient Rome, contain small colonies of honeybees and feature a clear plastic or glass wall that gives a view of the hive's internal workings.

"The kids are fascinated by this glimpse into a world usually unseen. The see-through hive allows them to watch the everyday activities of honeybees--the kinds of behavior that in nature occur in the dark," Caron says. "It's an ideal way to teach about bees, bee biology and social behaviors and ecology.

"I try to impress on the children that bees are integral to production agriculture--making things grow--and that, without them, we wouldn't have the abundance of fruits and vegetables we enjoy. I want to overcome that 'yuck' factor kids sometimes feel toward bees."

Caron and his portable observation hives are regular visitors to summer camps, community fairs, schools and museums throughout the state. The hives always generate tremendous interest among youngsters--no small feat for an ancient scientific tool at the beginning of the second millennium.

  At extension-run summer camps this year, more than 150 youngsters learned an amazing fact: Soil is more than just dirt.

Soil, water and nutrient management is quite a tall educational topic for kids ages 8-12. But, Susan Garey, extension educator for 4-H and livestock agent, found a way to bring it down to size with a new hands-on curriculum. Starting with a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Garey and others put together a program designed to offer youth-oriented explanations of the complicated issue of nutrient management.

"Now, these kids know where soil comes from, how plants use it and how fragile the Earth's topsoil layer is," Garey says. "Every lesson has a learn-by-doing component and offers possible community activities the students can implement to help increase involvement in their own neighborhoods.

"The campers learned about soil profiling, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles and the reasons for testing soil in their home gardens. We hope to engender in youngsters a desire to care about the land and water in their watershed, as well as demonstrate that they can have an impact on natural resources."

--Marianne Kirby Rhodes