RE Souper Supper

We had a tremendous turnout at the November Souper Supper, with more than 50 people coming to enjoy vegetarian stew, chicken mulligetawny, salad, cornbread and an array of desserts. It was a great night of fellowship and fun, as well as some good food. Thanks to everyone on the committee that contributed food.

We're not sure what brought everyone out: was it the ensuing board meeting? A break before cooking for Thanksgiving? An advance menu that appealed to many? Or perhaps it was the fabulous fun of the photo booth.

People young and old took advantage of the silliness. Thanks to the MEN WITH BEARDS who helped demonstrate the fun of the photo booth and braved the props to dress like a cat, a Sonic, a fox, a viking and a dapper Dan.

After dinner, others played in the fun. Some people might have even gotten pictures suitable for the Christmas card. Here's a few of  our favorites. The entire collection can be found here. (To keep the pictures protected, you have to create a shutterfly account.)

 

Fall events!

Loving the Black Cats (and all the other animals too)

Parents, do your youth love wearing their costumes everywhere? Let them show off on Sunday while helping raise money for a great cause.

And to everyone else, don't you love seeing children in costume that you see on a regular basis?

On SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, it's time for the kids to wear the costume one more time as they collect money for the local animal shelter. In the past, we've collected for groups such as UNICEF, but we decided to keep the need closer to home. The teens decided that the Anderson Humane Society was a group they wished to support.

So prepare for the influx of superheros, monsters, princesses and animals this Sunday and bring your small bills and change!

Decorating the Tree

Last year's ornament party was such a success that we're doing it again! Come to the Social Room on November 14, from 10 am-noon and find four stations for making ornaments. The RE committee is making angels. Look for other tables along with an assortment of hot beverages and tasty snacks!

Souper Supper

The RE committee is hosting the event on November 18 this year. We'll have vegetarian and meat soups as well as salad and cornbread. Also, we'll have a photo booth for everyone to enjoy, with props for fun! Babysitting will be provided, so let us make dinner, bring the family and enjoy some social time.

We Love Our Parents

We had a terrific parent orientation this past Sunday. Thanks to everyone who came and participated in the open discussion about Religious Education at UUFC. We are lucky to have a diverse group of parents from a wide range of backgrounds. However, they all share the same goals for their children: an opportunity to explore a broad range of beliefs and principles, so they can find their own theology and spirituality in a safe environment.

Also beginning as a resource for parents is our Parents Circle. While we had a Spiritual Parenting group, this was a more closed Covenant group. Instead, we are building an open community of parents to support and inspire each other, as well as discuss parenting issues we face.

The first meeting is Sunday, October 20 in the social room after the service. Bring your own lunch (or you can place a delivery/take out order before the meeting). We will enjoy lunch together from 12:15-12:45, and our meeting will be from 12:45-2:00. Each session will have a topic open for discussion. Childcare will be provided free (with love offerings accepted). 

The Parents Circle will meet the third Sunday each month. Look for further announcements about this supportive group. Contact Kari for more information.

If you still need to register your child or youth for the year, you can do so here.

A New Year, a New Chair

We enter Fall 2015 with excitement for a great year. This year will continue to build upon the work we have done in the past several years: great Spirit Play stories, more developed Teen curriculum, more Fifth Sunday get togethers and more holiday activities.

And, we have a new chair! Thanks to Meg MacArthur for her leadership for many years. We look forward to Karen Hiebel leading our great committee in the future. Karen brings a lot of ideas and experience to the program. She has taught religious education over the years since bringing in her toddler (now 15) to the program. She's served just about every post imaginable at UUFC: from membership to finance to president. We are grateful for her experience and energy as we develop programming for the children and youth.

Fellowship and lunch among teachers

Teacher Training was August 16. A special thank you to all our teachers who took time to not only teach, but to come to this session. Keeping a Safe Church environment was discussed, along with expectations from teachers among themselves as well as with the children. We also practiced a Spirit Play class, which some of our teachers did some method acting as the part of the children.

Our teaching year began on August 23. The children had an introduction to rituals and more specifically, the Water Ceremony. This is an important UU tradition practiced by many congregations: it is the time when we return from our summer adventures and gather as a community to start a new fall together. We share water from our travels both near and far, mixing the water together to show the bond we share as a congregation. The children had a chance to discuss what a ritual, as well as this ritual, meant and we then had a small water ceremony to bond as a class.

Spirit Play Water Ceremony

Things to look forward to in the fall:

• Parent Orientation is Sunday, September 13. We will provide food. In addition to covering the necessary topics, we also hope to hear from you and what you and your family hope to gain from the program. Please come ready for an engaging discussion.
• Spirit Play will continue to mirror the first Sundays in the service, exploring a variety of world religions throughout the fall. In the spring, we will use the stories to explore a variety of topics. 
• The Teens will also continue to finish out the world religions. We also hope they can find time in their busy schedules to get together for some painting and fellowship.
• We hope to put together a Crop Walk group of children and youth for the October 4 walk.
• A Pumpkin Carving party is planned for the fall.
• Our next Fifth Sunday is November 27. Might be a great day to get together with our Thanksgiving leftovers!

A Crafty Summer

With summer vacations, we took a little break from World Religions this summer. We asked those in the congregation who have a hobby that involves using their hands to share it with the children and youth. We had crochet, coloring mandalas, card making, basketweaving, knitting and even cake decorating. The children could see what those in the congregation enjoy making, and the congregation got to spread word on a favorite hobby.

Finger knitting to the right, learning to spool yarn on the left.

Christine (the author of this post) ended up teaching knitting. I brought a lot of the more whimsical stuff I've made over the years: a fox hat, a hedgehog toy, shark mittens. And then with a bag of scrap yarn, I taught the children to finger knit. You wrap the yarn around each of your four fingers to create the first row, and make the stitches by wrapping the yarn across all four fingers, and pulling the previous row over the new loop, for each finger. This makes a long tube (since most people can only make four stitches.) I turned my sample project into a snake, which has since become a favorite cat toy in our house.

By the end of the hour, we had children from age 6 to 16 making knitted tubes, even some of the youth who had felt craft-challenged over the years.

This was a great way to spread the love of making something by hand to the next generation. Thanks to all the people who shared a craft: Meg MacArthur, Kathy Crain, Ginny Loy, Karen Hiebel, Christine Prado, Kari Carson, Sarah Jaeschke, Michelle Bostick, Mary Orem and Sandra Sanderson (as well as anyone that Christine left off this list!)

Enjoy the pictures from the summer fun.

We started the summer by learning about mandalas.

An experienced crocheter shows her blanket project to a classmate.

A field trip to the labyrinth at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, in Seneca.

Card making with recycled materials proved to be a fun project.

Teaching: a Review and Summer RE

Teaching

Sometimes teaching RE is fantastic, sometimes it can be a little frustrating. Sometimes, as a teacher, you wonder if you are making an impact. And sometimes, you get a lesson that does show that you are actually teaching something to the children.

Elizabeth and Christine had this happen recently. We spent much of June repeating a few favorite lessons, including one about religious symbols. While we discussed each symbol, we talked about some of the stories we told throughout the year. Even we had to go back and look at the stories and review them. Unlike a year ago, almost all of the children knew the symbols. The bonus was that when prompted by some of the story titles, at least one of the children could summarize what that story was about.

While it was a little more of an active and perhaps rowdy class than we night normally conduct, it was thrilling and fun to see the children recall some of the stories and meanings from the past year. One of our newer children was overheard telling her father that it was awesome.

(Are you interested in enrolling your child? If you're already part of the congregation, are you interested in being part of a child's life as a teacher? Contact a member of the RE committee [Michelle, Karen, Sarah, Meg, Rhonda or Christine] or our DRE, Theresa.)

Summer RE

This year, we're trying something a little different. Look for some of our talented members of the congregation to share their craft with the children and youth! We have everything from labyrinths to crochet to basketweaving. Join us!

Here's the schedule:
7/5: Mandala coloring
7/12: Crochet
7/19: Field trip to the Labyrinth at the Episcopal Church in Seneca
7/26: Knitting
8/2: Card making
8/9: Cake and cookie decorating
8:16: Basket making

Teen Time

We hope everyone comes to enjoy the service on May 31. We will be talking about transitions of all ages, which will include a naming ceremony. On May 15, the teens got together with Theresa and Terre to help plan the service. One of the teens, Emily, tells us a little bit about what happened in this session:

We enjoyed a dinner from Pot Belly Deli, which was very good, then we decided to attempt to do some Israeli folk dancing. After some rather interesting attempts at dancing we finally started to plan the service. The topic we choose was change. That went well and after we did some juggling with stuffed animals. Then the sleepover started, which we kicked it off watching "Wreck It Ralph" with popcorn. In the morning we played Uno and danced to Meghan Trainer.

Thanks Emily! We look forward to seeing what the teens have cooked up for us.

Service Sunday

What's the best way to keep a group of little boys busy on a rainy Sunday? Put them to work!

Sunday was our planned service day. We combined all our projects into one day, and made it a bit of a party. A good mix of teens, older children and young kids worked well together to plant seeds, made laundry soap and make dog biscuits. Let's take these one at a time.

 

The Plants

The service project for this year was to benefit the South Carolina Botanical Garden. We had gone earlier in the fall to do some work to some of the plants. For the spring, we decided that we wanted to give some plants for the butterfly garden. Led by teacher Carolyn Turner, the younger class planted Scarlet Runner Beans. The flowers that the beans produce are delicious to both the butterflies and the hummingbirds. After mixing up the dirt, the children planted the seeds in peat pots, with stakes so that the beans could germinate.

This was Carolyn's last project with Religious Education before she moves to be closer to her daughter and grandchild. Thanks for all you have done for us Carolyn! We will miss you and are grateful for your work in the classroom and with the committee.

We will plant the seedlings at the garden on May 17, at noon, following class. Plan to meet at the Hayden Conference Center at the garden.

The Soap

The teens made laundry soap before and sold it to great acclaim. We decided to make it again. The soap contains washing soda, baking soda, borax and fels naptha. The first three ingredients come in powder form, but not the fels naptha. Grinding that soap is the tricky part of this project. We chose several methods: we ground it in a meat grinder, we grated it and we microwaved it. While microwaving it is entertaining as the soap expands like a balloon, it also creates a strong smell and it takes a while to cool off, so you can crumble it into a powder. Fortunately, it turns out that all these methods are fun for boys, and we got 21 containers of soap made in quick fashion. Look for the soap at the next Trading Post on May 10. We have seven containers in each scent: unscented, lavender and purification. They are not strongly scented. The purification is good for removing strong odors from clothes.

The Biscuits

This is our third year making these bones, which are very popular with our congregation's dogs. They contain egg, flour, oats, dry milk and every dog's favorite: PEANUT BUTTER. Two teams of three worked to make about 100 biscuits, and everyone worked to make the tags to go in the bags of biscuits. We sold some at the auction; look for Max to sell the rest! The proceeds from the sale of the biscuits go to the UUFC general fund.

Flower Communion

While we UUs don't celebrate Easter quite the same way as our Christian neighbors, we do honor the holiday. For us, the holiday celebrates the rebirth of the world: animals have their babies, the trees begin to bud and bloom and there are flowers. Many look back to the ancient roots of the season, with eggs and bunnies and lilies all coming from a variety of traditions.

At UUFC, Easter is a multi-generational service. Rev. Terre spent time in the service to ask what symbols the children could recall, and shared with all the history and meaning behind some of those symbols. Eggs mean more than fertility: the Chinese have a creation story in which the entire universe is contained within an egg. Christians use dogwoods to tell the story of the crucifixion. The Easter bunny is a tradition that came from Germany.

Finally, we shared a truly Unitarian story: that of flower communion. Created in the 1920s by Unitarian minister Norbert Capek in Czechoslovakia, it was a way to celebrate the beauty of the earth seen while congregants walked to church. Each flower would be unique and lovely, much as the person who brought it with them. The flowers were made even more lovely by being shared together.

Rev. Terre had the children surround the flowers and bless them. The children decided to bless the flowers with hope and with love. One child suggested we all give each other hugs after the service. Then, after the blessing, all who wished to came forward to take a different flower.

A truly moving way to celebrate the season of rebirth.

Fifth Sunday Fun and Games

On a beautiful weekend, we had our first fun and games event. People brought their own lunches, as well as food to share and we all enjoyed the lovely weather outside. Parents had a chance to catch up and socialize while the kids had fun on the playground. We had kids of all ages: from one to teenagers and adults with and without kids.

The weather was so nice and the playground so fun, that we didn't even break out any board games this time.

We hope to make this a regular addition to our schedule. If you know a family that has been a little leery about joining our congregation, the Fifth Sunday Fun and Games event might be a good way for them to get to know us in a casual setting.

The Great Kapok Tree

Did you get to see the great performance of The Great Kapok Tree on February 15? If you didn't make it, you missed some Oscar-worthy performances, and a wonderful message that carried through to the service on February 22, about being an effective activist for the earth.

The story talks about our seventh principle, the interdependent web of life. If the kapok tree is hewn, much goes with it. We see many animals, from bees to porcupines to jaguars to monkeys, beg the sleeping lumberjack to leave the tree, as it provides all of them life and sustenance.

Made even more special, the children used a variety of beautiful objects shared by Reverend Terre Balof, who brought them back from her travels to Panama. These are made by indigenous people of the area, to help support their communities.

Great job to the teens who helped narrate the story, as well as the children who played the roles of lumberjack and a host of animals so well.

Kung Fu Movie Fun

On February 22 at noon, come join us at Founders' House for a little movie fun: Kung Fu Panda!

You might ask yourself, "What on earth? What does Kung Fu Panda have to do with world religions? That's a big box office hit." Indeed, it is, but the movie has lessons that related to Buddhism. And, just as importantly, it reminds us that we all deserve respect, no matter what we might appear to be.

Look for  Po the Panda to find inner strength. Shifu the sensei seeks patience. Tigress seeks respect. And Oogway is there to help all of them find their path.

Watch the trailer.

So bring a dish (and maybe a pillow) and we'll all enjoy a fun movie.

Teacher Lunch and Learn

A group of teachers got together in late January to share fellowship, lunch and tips and techniques for successful classes.

The entire group enjoyed a lovely vegan lunch. As we don't always see each other on Sundays, it was an opportunity to catch up after the holiday (and flu) season. The two groups of teachers then broke into two groups to discuss what had worked well in their respective classes, and what could be improved. It was a useful exercise with healthy dialogue.

Here is recap of what was discussed for each group:

Early Learners

All agreed that the lessons have gone well and Spirit Play has made teaching much more fun. Two topics were discussed.

The first was making sure the children got meaning out of the lesson. Suggestions included: 

• discussing the takeaway points during the free play time
• reminding them frequently of the principles on the bulletin board
• identify the principles in every story
• consider reviewing one principle a month

The second was classroom management. The most important thing is that the teachers be consistent in dealing with behavior. Other ideas and suggestions were made and should help maintain a more peaceful environment will not only make the classroom easier for teachers, but more welcome to children who are more quiet and introspective.

Teens

The teens need discussion and a time to socialize together. Most of our teens have been with us for a while. The goal is to engage them more. The teachers concluded using current events and issues, and giving them a safe place to discuss these would be a helpful way of finding UU principles in action.

Also discussed was a way to engage some of the teens that might not participate as much as they should. Body language techniques were discussed, as well as starter sentences to help break the ice if they are hesitant to talk.

Lastly, they discussed ways to make the teens more involved in church decision making. Giving the teens a voice in what they want from their church community might help them transition into being UU adults.


These sessions were helpful to all in making RE a positive experience not just for the students, but for the teachers and the congregation as well.

The children and youth did a great job presenting "Tali the Christmas Star" back in December. Ellen and Bella served as wonderful narrators! The children did a great job playing shepherds and stars, the choir played angels, along with Zeus the standard poodle, and we even had a family expecting a child to play Mary and Joseph!

If you missed it, Tali is a small, dim star with a group of offbeat friends (the asteroid, the comet, and the white dwarf) who manage to shine brightly for the shepherds to find the baby Jesus. A funny and sweet story, we were really proud of everyone who helped put on such an entertaining and delightful version.