Religious Exploration
Religious Exploration for Children 7 – 11; Baby Sitting for up to 6 Starts in January
From Laura Giner Bair
Beginning in January, the Religious Education Program at the UUCRT will be held the first, second and fourth Sunday of every month. This program will continue through the end of May, 2018.
After the Time for All Ages portion of the service, interested children will depart the service for their RE lesson. The lessons will follow the Wonderful Welcome curriculum available on the Unitarian Universalist Association website, UUA.Org. All Wonderful Welcome sessions follow the same structure. Between an Opening and a Closing, activities guide participants to explore and experience an intangible gift and how we, as Unitarian Universalists, share that gift with others.
Through the Wonderful Welcome lessons, we will strive to:
- Expand children’s understanding of their relationships with others, including people they know, people they will meet and all life that shares our planet
- Create opportunities for children to identify and practice a wide variety of welcoming behaviors; activate children’s capacity to welcome many manifestations of the interconnected web of life, including people, animals and the natural environment
- Teach children the concept of “intangible gifts,” qualities that can be shared but cannot be seen or held
- Teach the importance of welcoming as an act of Unitarian Universalist faith and as an expression of our Unitarian Universalist Principles
- Develop and enrich children’s sense of belonging to their religious education peer community, their congregational community and the larger Unitarian Universalist faith community
- Introduce practices of stewardship
- Help children create a shared atmosphere that encourages a sense of reverence, awe, gratitude and wonder.
Babysitting services will be available every Sunday from 10:15 until 12:15 beginning in January 2018 and continuing through June.