Dr. Seuss and Unitarian Universalists: Grades 1-2

These stories are fun and engaging. But even more important, they are based on life situations and experiences and give us a way to reflect, to talk about things that are part of our lives.

• • we all sleep,
• • we all get lost,
• • we all are afraid sometimes,
• • we all meet people who are on -- and sometimes in -- our way,
• • we all like adventure in various ways,
• • we all struggle with what is right and what is not.

Stories have been used in Unitarian Universalist religious education material for generations. The stories of Dr. Seuss are wonderful resources. A key to using the stories is to have a dialog. This means that each participant is able to express thoughts about the story or the reflection questions, and there is no need to come to a common view or to convince anyone that a particular view is correct. In a dialog, each participant contributes, listens to others, and hears new perspectives. Details of the story do not matter: how the participant relates to the story does.Some stories may raise uncomfortable situations. The pictures and the rhythm of the words of the stories may mask the deeper meanings.

Bibleodeon: 10-12 year olds

There are two curricula’s Bibleodeon which introduces Hebrew and Christian scriptures by props investigating the best-known Hebrew and Christian stories with such props as the Bibledeon microphone and such interactive challenges as investigating the Cain-Able crime scene. Participants act in 11 amusing playlets with characters like the Fatted Calf, illustrate a time line, keep doodle books, give awards to outstanding biblical women, and more.

The children will get to explore connections between biblical events and UU principals, between biblical ideas an their own lives. They experience the Bible as one of many wonderful UU sources.

Amazing Grace: 10-12 year olds

It is by no means necessary that I should live, but it is by all means necessary that I should act rightly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The song "Amazing Grace" a traditional hymn, its language rich with the verbiage of sin and salvation, its melody echoed over many lands in a poignant mix of brass, voice, and bagpipe, its message sometimes haunting, sometimes hopeful. The children have the opportunity to develop new maturity, new powers, new insight, new opportunity to experience all the joys and all the sorrows of an increasingly independent life.

The program, Amazing Grace, is packed with action, information, and challenge; the other, a group of young minds and hearts seeking, learning, feeling, growing, and yearning—a promising combination. Amazing Grace intends to help children understand right and wrong and act on their new understanding. Its purpose is to equip them for moving safely and productively through the middle- and high school years, when they will be continually tugged toward both ends of the ethics continuum. Through their involvement in Amazing Grace, youth will come to recognize and depend on their Unitarian Universalist identity and resources as essential to their movement toward understanding, independence, and fulfillment of personal promise.

This curriculum is part of and in the spirit of the multi-faceted Tapestry of Faith program being created by the Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Amazing Grace works toward the goals established for all Tapestry programs by focusing on ethical development with a rich philosophical base and with certain, age-appropriate applicability.

Stories at the Heart of the Mystery

A Yearlong Coming of Age Curriculum for All Our Youth in High School

This Coming of Age program is centered around the theme of storytelling. We start the year by presenting to the youth an image of four "story circles." The largest circle represents the Cosmos and the story of the Universe as told in the Big Bang theory and Evolution. The next circle is the circle which represents all the World's Religions, humanity’s longing to understand itself and its place in the Universe. Nestled within in that cirle story circle of Unitarian Universalism as one “faith story” of many. And finally, at the core, is the story of the self.

One of the missions of this COA program is to help the youth articulate their own unfolding beliefs by reflecting on their own life stories and the richness and wisdom of all the other story circles of life and meaning. The COA year begins with youth making timelines of their own lives. They will continue to fill them in all year, as they reflect on various issues. During the year, they will be learning stories from our UU heritage to understand basic Unitarian and Universalist theology, as well as how we are all affected and influenced by the wider religious movements.