Here’s the plan so far for Religious Education (RE) for the upcoming 2022-2023 congregational year, which beings in September. Stay tuned for more specific information as teaching teams meet and make calendaring decisions!
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PreK | Sunday Morning RE Class — starting October 2022
Our PreK class, for three-year-olds through Kindergarten, will guide our younger children in building trust and community with each other and their teachers. Children will experience lighting a chalice, sharing joys and sorrows, our important stories about our values and our faith tradition, and independent play.
Grades K-1 | Our Whole Lives (OWL) — Spring 2023
Our Whole Lives K/1 is an eight-session curriculum designed to help kindergarten and first-grade children gain the knowledge, life principles, and skills they need to express their sexuality in life-enhancing ways. OWL models and teaches caring, compassion, respect, and justice. It helps young children identify their attitudes, values, and feelings about themselves, their sexuality, and others’ sexuality. Participants in Grades K-1 are guided by trained facilitators through an engaging curriculum that addresses age appropriate topics.
Grades 1-5 | Sunday Morning Spirit Play — starting October 2022
Spirit Play is a Montessori-based program that begins with a gathering to learn our UU stories and allows children the flexibility to learn at their own pace and with individual choice of activities following the story.
What do children learn in Spirit Play?
We help children live into their own answers to existential questions such as: Where did we come from? What are we doing here? What is our purpose? How do we choose to live our lives? What are our gifts? How do we use them? What happens when we die? Why do we die? Why are we lonely and sad sometimes?
Grades 4-5 | Our Whole Lives (OWL) — Fall 2022
Our Whole Lives (OWL) for Grades 4/5 is a ten-session curriculum designed to help 4th and 5th grade children gain the knowledge, life principles, and skills they need to express their sexuality in life-enhancing ways. OWL models and teaches caring, compassion, respect, and justice.
It helps children in Grades 4-6 understand the physical and emotional changes of puberty. Participants explore values, communication and decision making, as well as physical health and development, guided by trained facilitators.
Grades 6-7 | Sunday Afternoon Compass Points, 4-6pm — starting October 2022
Compass Points will lead its young adolescent participants on a year long spiritual journey during which they will have opportunities:
- To sort out their feelings about themselves and their world as they do the difficult work of starting to create their adult selves
- To discover what they believe about life’s big questions-the nature of humanity and the divine, beliefs about death and faith
- To think independently; assume responsibility, make decisions, explore values and adopt the practice of radical hospitality ·
- To acquire enough background in Unitarian Universalist history, polity and theology that they can know and express what Unitarian Universalism stands for
- To share the above with the adult congregation, which often knows even less about Unitarian Universalism than do children in religious education programs
- To understand that religious liberty is a hard-won legacy that continues to need protection
Grade 8 | Our Whole Lives (OWL), Sundays at 4pm — starting October 2022
Our Whole Lives (OWL) provides participants with a more holistic understanding of human sexuality, based in our values of respect, personal responsibility and in the context of relationship. Participants are given the guidance they need to be able to make wise decisions about their sexual health and behavior.
Grades 9-12 | Quest, our Coming of Age program — starting fall 2022
Youth in grades 9-12 who were not able to attend Quest during the pandemic will be able to join our restart of the Quest program this year. Classes will meet on Sundays at 4pm. This program is our introduction to the high school youth program and a wonderful rite of passage for our adolescents — one that is missing in most other areas of our lives.
Quest guides our young people to better articulate their own beliefs and values and to better understand our Unitarian Universalist faith. Participation in Quest leads young people to recognize their own growth and change, affirming their individual identities. This special year ends with an important milestone ceremony in which the group is honored by the congregation.
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