It’s the
frosty winter season! But our Westside classrooms are warm and buzzing. This
week, our K-2, grades 3-5 and middle school classes are starting a new
curriculum. You can learn more about the spring semester focus for your child
or youth in several ways:
·
· Our RE blog at www.wsuureligiousexploration.blogspot.com
· A WSUU RE spring prospectus from the greeter table at church
· The WSUU web site at http://www.wsuu.org/curricula.php
· Your DRE! Contact me any time at 410-274-2018, or dre@wsuu.org
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
1.
Visioning Session for WSUU’s Youth Programming: Look for a summary of our
dynamic visioning session in the Order of Service on Sunday, February 26th.
The youth are currently planning for the formation of a YAC (Youth Adult
Committee) that will support the implementation of our vision priorities.
2.
Drum 'n Dine - Wednesday January
23, 6:30p.m. in the Social Hall (new time and new format!): This is a great
opportunity for a mutli-generational
experience – bring your children or youth!
Bring a potluck
dish and come join this dynamic opportunity to participate in a drum circle,
experience the joy and meditative connection of drumming with others, and build
community! This month we will meet from 6:30-7:30 for a more introductory
session that will be valuable for all ranges of experience. We’ll share dinner
at 7:30, and we’ll begin a more advanced session at 8:00 led by Larry Jones,
our Sunday percussionist. All are welcome to stay and join in – Larry will be
teaching us several pieces for potential performance. (A suggested donation of
$5 will support Larry’s time with us.) Bring a drum if you have one, and we’ll
have extra drums and hand percussion instruments available. And bring a friend
from your community! If you have questions, contact John Britt at johnwbritt@comcast.net or 206-323-3062, or Betsy Lowry at dre@wsuu.org or 410-274-2018.
THIS
WEEK:
Story Time: Three
and four year olds
will work on learning
our covenant of love and acceptance this semester. The young UUs in this class will learn through hands-on experience with
the wonderful and wide world around them; stories about our faith that teach our history and
principles; and play, which is the natural expression of the young child's
heart and mind. We seek to teach children that the whole of their being is
accepted as they are in this class.
This week our children will share a story and snack together.
Please let the teachers in the class know if your child has a food allergy.
Spirit Play: Spirit Play is the Montessori approach to Religious
Education. In each session, children will hear a story and then experience a
time for art expression relating to that story or another story they heard
earlier in the year. The stories have a Unitarian Universalist focus and seek
to build a UU identity through liturgical lessons pertaining to our central
story, our covenant, our religious symbol the Flaming Chalice, our church
history, and UU heroes.
This week’s story
is “Little Penguin,” which focuses on honesty, and the Red Promise of
respecting all people by being truthful.
Kindergarten through Second Grade:
“Wonderful Welcome”:
In the first
semester of this year
the class worked on a program called “Creating Home,” in which the children learned about different kinds of
homes and how our church is like a home. In this
second semester, we will learn how we can welcome people into our home. The
Wonderful Welcome curriculum engages and challenges leaders and children alike
to explore how and why we are willing to welcome others into our lives.
·
Week 1: The
Gift of Love – Empty Box
This week our children will be introduced to
the Wonder Box, which will have a new gift to explore every week. For this first
lesson, the box will be empty, and they will learn that some gifts, like the
gift of love, can be intangible. They will sing the song, “Little Drummer Boy”
about a little boy who didn’t have a gift to give, so he gave a song.
Third through Fifth Grades: “Windows
and Mirrors”:
We spent our first semester together hearing the moral stories of many cultures
in our Moral Tales program. This semester, Windows and Mirrors nurtures
children's ability to identify their own experiences and perspectives and to seek
out, care about, and respect those of others. The program teaches that there
are always multiple viewpoints and everyone's viewpoint matters. Children will be creating their own window/mirror panels this
semester, showing the relationship between how we see things looking out, and
what others see in us, looking in.
· This week’s lesson will set the stage for the core focus of the
Windows and Mirrors module. The class will talk about Charles Darwin, who was a
Unitarian and whose father was Unitarian minister. His father wanted him to be
a minister also, but instead he went to the Galapagos Islands and created the
theory of evolution. There was some fear around what he found because it
changed the relationship between religion and science.
Middle School: “Riddle and Mystery”: In our first semester, we explored
Unitarian Universalism
and the ways in which our faith
can help us answer our ethical questions. We will go deeper this semester
through our “Riddle and Mystery” program. The purpose of Riddle and Mystery is to assist middle
schoolers in their
own search for understanding. Each of the sessions introduces and processes a
Big Question. We begin with Paul Gauguin’s famous triptych (Where do we come
from? What are we? Where are we going?)
and end with the three Unitarian Universalist questions (Can we ever
solve life’s mystery? How can I know what to believe? What does Unitarian
Universalism mean to me?).
· This week is an introduction to how to deal with big questions.
The first question is “where do we come from” and the kids interview each other
and talk about their lives. It’s a seemingly easy first question, though it can
go deep, to get them thinking about how to address these questions and how they
can actually go deeper and deeper. For example, the answers to “where do we
come from?” could be “from Washington” or “from the earth” or “from the
universe.”
High School: “Our Name is Earl”:
On the first and third Sundays of each month, High School Youth are
invited to explore religious concepts through the life of Earl Hickey as he
goes on a spiritual quest to be a better person. Based on the television series
My Name is Earl, youth
will learn about our Unitarian Universalist values and Principles and clarify
their ideas about important religious matters that
become part of our personal credos.
· This week our high school lesson from Our Name is Earl will be
about Acceptance of One Another and Encouragement to Growth through the episode
“Teacher Earl”. In this episode we are introduced to Ralph, an old crime buddy
of Earl’s. This is Earl’s coming out story – he has to “come out” to Ralph that
he lives differently. Youth will talk about self-differentiation, and learning
to be true to ourselves, even in the presence of others who believe or feel
differently.
Youth Group
will meet from 7PM to 8:30 PM in the Social Hall with Shelby Grenier and Cole
Strauss, focusing on formation of the YAC and planning for their upcoming
morning service.
See
you Sunday!
Betsy
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