Floyd 4-H students bring home 14 1st places

Students from 12 counties participate at competitions at GHC.

Expanding the wealth of knowledge for youngsters all over Northwest Georgia was the focus for a busy day at Georgia Highlands College Saturday. Fourth, fifth and sixth-graders from 12 counties flocked to the GHC Rome campus for the annual 4-H Cloverleaf District Project Achievement Awards competition.

Floyd County had 14 first place winners, 13 of them in the fourth and fifth grade division, just one in sixth grade. Thomas Patterson, Gabe Blackburn, Aidan Fuller, Kileigh Barcomb, Bob Bushnell, Ashtin Keefe, Layla Shealy, Tesa Roberson, Sarah Babb, Sara Grace Abernathy, Brandt Dodd, Chloe Powell and Silas Bryson were winners in the younger group.

Christina Tomlin was the only sixth grade winner locally.

Youngsters presented project work in fields from Ag Awareness and Archaeology to Wildlife and Workforce Preparation. New categories in the competition in this cycle of competition include Historic Places & Events as well as Robotics.

“I was trying to think of a topic that not many people would choose and I thought robotics might work,” said Lee Donahue, a fourth grader at the Montessori School of Rome. Taking part in 4-H programming was a natural for Donahue, who’s parents Arthur Lee Donahue IV and mother Mary Donahue, also grew up in the 4-H program. Mary came up in the Mitchell County 4-H program, however her husband was a Floyd County 4-H’er.

Joshua Girgis, a fifth grader at the Montessori School of Rome, presented his work in Wilderness Survival.

“I was really into the outdoors and I wanted to know how if you were stranded and didn’t really

Montessori School of Rome fourth-grader Lee Donahue speaks about robotics at the 4-H Cloverleaf District Project Achievement Awards program Saturday at Georgia Highlands College.

Joshua Girgis, a fifth-grader at the Montessori School of Rome, does his 4-H project presentation Saturday on Wilderness Survival skills.

have that much, how you could survive on your own,” Girgis said. He confessed to being a little Doug Walker / RN-T

nervous giving his presentation. “I feel like this has helped me care for the environment a whole Doug Walker / RN-T

lot more,” the fifth grader said.

Abbie Salmon said approximately 60 of the youth in the Floyd County 4-H program took part in the event.

Ashlyn William, a homeschooled fourth grader, actually played the piano for her project. Williams said she had been studying piano for about four years, and was not too nervous during her performance.

Eli Shields from Walker County did a project on monkeys, telling the judges that some monkeys were big parts of Chinese and Indian mythology. Hayden Scheeler from Catoosa County learned a lot about sun conure parrots and told the audience, “They can mimic humans, but don’t talk as well as other birds.”

Most of the projects or performances were done in classrooms in front of dozens of other competitors.