Religious Education classes will resume Sunday, 9/25! Please register your child(ren) by clicking HERE.
Below is a list of this year’s awesome Religious Education (RE) offerings…
OWL! (Our Whole Lives sexuality education): Sexuality education programs change lives. Honest, accurate information about sexuality changes lives. It dismantles stereotypes and assumptions, builds self-acceptance and self-esteem, fosters healthy relationships, improves decision making, and has the potential to save lives.
We are once again offering OWL this coming church year. By offering it two years in a row, very few children and youth will end up missing any OWL opportunities. We will not be offering OWL next year (2023-2024) but returning to our tradition of offering it every other year.
K/1 OWL (fall—8 sessions): OWL affirms the role of parents as their children’s primary sexuality educators and covers topics and skills that both parents and students want but that schools are less likely to cover. Under Your Wing: Sexuality Education Video Series for Parents and Caregivers Under Your Wing is a series of short videos that support parents and caregivers as the primary sexuality educators of their children ages 5-7. In each video, Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, co-authors of Our Whole Lives Sexuality Education for Grades K-1, 2nd ed., share conversation tips and at-home reading recommendations related to topics children are curious about. Resources mentioned in the videos and many more can be found on this resource list (PDF).
Videos for K/1 Parents: Videos for Parents of Grade K-1 Children | UUA.org
K/1 Wonderful Welcome (winter/spring): In this program, children identify intangible gifts central to Unitarian Universalism such as friendship, hospitality, and fairness, and share these gifts with others.
2/3 Signs of Our Faith: You must decide what you love and do your best to live that love faithfully every day. Signs of Our Faith guides children to do their best to live faithful lives every day. It presents traits or values that most Unitarian Universalists love, including the quest for knowledge, reverence for life, supporting one another on our faith journeys, and public witness. Children examine how their lives do and can exhibit these traits and values and come to understand that their faith is a living faith whose histories and teachings are fortifications for living faithfully in a complex world.
4/5 Love Connects Us: Love Connects Us celebrates important ways Unitarian Universalists live our faith in covenanted community. Moved by love and gathered in spirit, we embrace our responsibility toward one another and the world at large. We encourage one another’s search for truth and meaning. We strive to be active in peace-making and other efforts to improve our world.
5/6 OWL (spring): This 10-workshop curriculum is designed to help children in grades 5 and 6 gain the knowledge, life principles, and skills they need to understand and express their sexuality in holistic, life-enhancing ways. Like the other Our Whole Lives programs for different age groups, this comprehensive, developmentally appropriate program introduces key topics like values, body image, gender, and sexual identity, peer pressure, and healthy relationships with sensitivity and inclusiveness, yet without specifically religious doctrine or reference.
6/7 Amazing Grace: This program guides 6th and 7th graders through ways to determine right from wrong with a Unitarian Universalist perspective, and act on their new understandings.
7/8 OWL (begins in November and will run through late May/early June on Sunday evenings): A sexuality education program for youth that models and teaches caring, compassion, respect, and justice. A holistic program that moves beyond the intellect to address the attitudes, values, and feelings that youth have about themselves and the world.
Unlike many other sexuality curricula currently available, this program is comprehensive and progressive. In an inclusive and developmentally appropriate manner, it addresses sensitive topics that are typically excluded.
8/9 Coming of Age (COA): Coming of Age is a yearlong curriculum that helps teens learn more about Unitarian Universalism and articulate their own beliefs. Our program is sensitive to culture, race, class, gender, and theological/philosophical diversity. Workshops for youth include social justice projects and rites of passage. Participants explore theology, spirituality, and history through discussion, drama, music, writing, and art. The program concludes with a ritual that features the youth sharing their statements of personal belief (credo statements) with the congregation during Sunday morning worship.
9/12 Senior Youth: Senior Youth will meet for discussion, curriculum work, games, and social justice work. Whether delivering an “elevator speech,” taking part in an interfaith dialogue, or conversing with friends at the lunch table, youth need practice in describing our multifaceted faith in terms that are personally meaningful and true.
11/12 OWL (spring): Using a comprehensive approach, this program helps senior-high youth gain the knowledge, life principles, and skills they need to express their sexuality in life-enhancing ways. Includes a parent orientation and 12 sessions.
Children’s Chapel Returns!
Children in grades K-6 are invited to join us for some Children’s Chapel fun on Sunday, 9/11, in Waters House. We’ll meet at 10:25 so parents have time to make their way back across the street for a special 9/11 service.
Nursery Reopening!
We are planning to re-open the UUSS nursery on Sunday, 9/11! Our childcare providers are hard at work cleaning and organizing the nursery, toys, and supplies in preparation for children through age 5 to join us!
Canoe & Kayaking Event!
Last Tuesday’s evening paddle was amazing! We have two additional evening paddling opportunities planned for 8/16 and 8/23! Come, join the fun!
Meet by 6pm on Tuesday, 8/16, at the Gateway landing park (see map link below).
We can paddle around the islands, and maybe catch a view of the water ski team doing their fancy formations.
Bring a headlamp – we can end the session with a “cave paddle” – there is a huge culvert under SCCC that we can paddle into. It takes about 5 minutes to go all the way to the end of the tunnel. It is dark, so a headlamp or flashlight is helpful.
RSVP is appreciated,
If you need equipment, please indicate this to Randy & Robin.
If you have a youth who would like to attend the all-day paddling adventure on 8/27 (rain date 8/28), please remind them that they need to attend at least one of our evening paddles.
Map location: https://goo.gl/maps/8KdccUjA3hkbPCd2A
The 8/23 location will be announced next week.
Do You Want to Help Support RE?!
With fall right around the corner and the start of another church year quickly approaching, there are lots of ways you too can help out with RE! Perhaps you might like to teach RE? Or be a substitute teacher? Be a member of the RE Team? Lead a Children’s Chapel? Be a Sunday Supervisor? Help organize classrooms? If you’d like to support our Children and Youth in any of these ways, please contact Director of Lifespan RE Robin Ahearn at dlre@uuschenectady.org.