Youth working on Souper Bowl of Caring canstructions
This Sunday, September 18th, we launch our full Sunday School schedule for the 2016-2017 year!
In our Innovation Conversations with parents, teachers, grandparents, and other stakeholders last Spring, we heard that children and youth today need
- Practice in critical thinking
- Opportunities to engage with empathy
- Tools to develop their Unitarian Universalist identity
- Ways to understand the many cultures and religions of the world.
- More ways for children to be in community with one another and with all our generations.
Accordingly, we use these curricula to help meet those goals-
Preschool/Kindergarten: We Are Many, We Are One (Room 105)
This curriculum offers children the opportunity to learn about their religious community and its traditions as well as the freedom to discover and express their uniqueness. Our young children learn through relationship, with plentiful helpings of wonder and fun. Three and up
First to Fourth Grade: Moral Tales (Room 107)
Every day our children go forth into a complex world where they are often faced with difficult decisions and situations. Moral Tales attempts to uses stories to activate and inform children’s learning, providing them with the spiritual and ethical tools they will need to make choices and take actions reflective of their Unitarian Universalist beliefs and values.
Fifth to Eight Grade: You the Digital Creator (Room 209)
Our world is changing nearly as fast as our teens are! The digital revolution brings new creative power that youth can use to shape their future lives. This program helps them understand and apply their new power in positive ways with empathy, critical thinking, and working from their core Unitarian Universalist values.
Eighth Grade: Coming of Age 10 AM (Room 207)
Over the course of a year, youth gather for dynamic workshops, retreats, and justice projects. With mentors and guides, participants explore what they find meaningful and how to build a spiritual “toolkit” to help them face the joys, sorrows, wonders, and challenges of being human. The program culminates with a Sunday service where each youth shares their credo, a statement of their beliefs and values.
High School (Room 208)
Our high school youth work with their adult advisers to plan their calendar, incorporating UU curricula, video and current event discussion, as well as games and opportunities to bond and restore spirits amidst hectic teenage lives.
Youth lighting chalice
Each Sunday school-aged children begin with their families for the start of our Sunday worship service. We sing together and share a story, then children proceed to class with their teachers as guides.
In addition to traditional “Sunday School” days twice each month, we take time to be together for chapel and to do good together.
Miracles – This monthly chapel time invites a prolonged encounter with awe and wonder. Stories from our UU sources and hands-on activities engage participants to discern, experience, and express awe and wonder, and discover their own agency for miracle-making (Room 108)
Action Days – Pre-K to Middle School work together on service projects as we practice living out our Unitarian Universalist values. We’re excited to include pocket prairie gardening this year, in addition to such traditions as the UNICEF Carnival and Souper Bowl of Caring.
We look forward to coming together in our classes this Sunday.
If you’d like to join in the learning as a teacher or assistant, let’s talk!
Katy
Katy Carpman, Director of Religious Education
