Washington chapter has big plans for FFA week

Every year, Washington FFA celebrates National FFA week! This year's celebration is the week of Feb. 19-26. In preparation for this week, all members of the Washington FFA gather together to present ideas and come up with activities to represent the group. This year we have events and dress-up days planned for every day of the week that involve not only FFA members but also students and staff in the Washington school district.

On Monday, we are planning to take several students to Louisa-Muscatine to participate in Sub-District events. Jonathan Moore and William Peterson will be showing their skills and competing in the Welding event. Halle Cuddeback will be showing her knowledge and speaking skills while competing in the Creed Speaking event. Ava Wulf will be showing her communication skills while participating in the Job Interview event. Teague Mayer will also be displaying his communication skills in the Ag Broadcasting event. Hayden Janecek and Charley Stoutner will show their knowledge of past and present FFA during the Chapter Test. Tess Berdo, Madison Conway, Lauren Lucavsky, Peggy Miller, Taylor Moore, Rowan Ross and Jade Sheetz will all team together and present proper meeting conduct in the Conduct of Meeting Sub-District event.

On Tuesday, we will continue to celebrate FFA Week by having the high school participate in the dress up day. Students are welcome to take photos in the Ag Hallway that is all decorated for the week! We also host a coloring contest throughout all the school buildings and will give prizes to the winner of each grade on Friday.

On Wednesday, several members of the FFA will travel to the Washington Middle School and engage the students in farm-like competitions. We will randomly select students from the crowd to come down and participate in competitions such as pedal tractor races, tug a war, tire flipping, cow milking, egg races and many other activities.

On Thursday, we start our day off by preparing breakfast for all of the staff in our district. We serve a variety of foods, including pancakes, egg casserole, bacon and sausage. In the afternoon we will host the Ag Olympics in the gym for all the high school students. During this, students compete in activities such as tug-of-war, tire flipping, pedal tractor races, corn relays and hay bale tossing. The students compete by grade and receive prizes for the first and second place winners.

On Friday, we begin our day bright and early. At 5:30 in the morning members meet at the fairgrounds with our tractors and line up for the parade. We leave around 6:00 and head to get breakfast. After breakfast we have a parade route that brings us to the high school parking lot where we line up our tractors and take a big group photo!

Throughout the week there are dress up days which include fun outfits like dress like a lumberjack day, hunting season and American day. This is a week out of the year that our members of FFA really look forward to and enjoy putting on for other staff and students in our school district!