Kids’ Connection volunteers and other parentsfor a light lunch from 12:00-1:30pm. Learn about Kids’ Connection plans for the new year, and get information on more ways to involve your children in service to our community. […]
On Sunday, September 7th, the Family Ministry Team has some big plans. First, the Kids’ Connection volunteers will be commissioned by Reverend Kevin and the congregation during the early portion of the downstairs service. When I asked what “being commissioned” meant, I was told that it is something like being blessed at the beginning of a new undertaking. In this case, the new undertaking is the inception of a new year of our work on behalf of the children and youth of UUCM.
The downstairs service on that day will be UUCM’s water communion, a ritual held annually in the fall during which we welcome each other back into community after our summer adventures, large and small. Each family is invited to bring in small containers of water that represent their family’s lived experiences during the past many months. The adults can bring in water for the downstairs service. And, the children can bring in water for the water communion we will hold upstairs during our child-centered service. (Rest assured, we will have small containers of water that symbolically represent a child’s experiences over the summer months for those children who are not able to bring in their own containers of water.).
Finally, after the service on September 7th, the Family Ministry team will hold a Parent Cafe, a time and place to bring together the adults who love and care for the children of UUCM. We will serve a light lunch to the participating parents. Child care after the service (with lunch) will be provided by several faithful Kids’ Connection volunteers. If you are a parent of one or more of our amazing UUCM children, look for us around 12 pm in the Hosea Ballou room (the former nursery) adjacent to the large room in the back of the building where our social hour occurs each week.
September 7th is shaping up to be a big day for the Family Ministry Team and our Kids’ Connection community. I hope you will join us to honor the service of our volunteers who work so faithfully to make this program happen for the children of UUCM, to celebrate our returning to community at the end of our lovely Nevada County summer, and to build our connections with each other as we work to keep our Kids’ Connection program growing and evolving just as our children do.
During the summer months, the number of children attending our Kids’ Connection program on any given Sunday diminishes, understandably so. Nevada County living beckons with all that it has to offer during these vibrantly sunny months.
Even so, we have some lovely days upstairs with the children who do find their way to us. One Sunday, in early June, two big kids (five-year-olds) and a toddler (less than two years old) walked into our little sanctuary. That day provided me with a serene and heart-warming experience as I observed how these three children have taken ownership of the rituals we use in our little service upstairs each Sunday morning.
As we left the downstairs sanctuary to the tune of This Little Light of Mine, the two five-year-olds darted up the stairs, while the toddler and I, hand in hand, took our time negotiating each big stair-step together. By the time we got into the sanctuary, the two big five-year-olds were well into the process of building our altar. This altar building routine has become so meaningful and familiar to them that they do not need any adult prompting or direction to carry it out. This ritual is one I am certain they will remember when they are old enough to have kids of their own. That idea is one that guides Lindsay and me as we think about the learning experiences we create for the children. How can we create experiences that are powerful enough that they become integrated into the children’s very identity as UU’s?
On this particular day in early June, the building of the altar went on and on. The two older kids collaborated with each other, discussing their thoughts and decisions about which pieces to include and how to arrange them. The toddler eventually thought “enough already,” and she sat down to read a book to herself while the other two dithered on about the placement of pinecones, feathers, and stars. Eventually, all three of them agreed that the altar was complete, and we celebrated with a group photo. You can see the pride of accomplishment in the faces and the thumbs up stances of the two older children, the primary designers of the altar on this day.
I am absolutely ebullient when we have energetic days with 12 children upstairs. And, days like this one in early June, when two big kids and a toddler walked into our sanctuary, are also heart-warming because they provide moments of closeness and intimacy in our connections with each other. No matter what, the spirit of Unitarian Universalism sustains all that we are and do with each other upstairs in our Kids’ Connection program on Sunday mornings.
Over the last five months in Kids’ Connection, we have been exploring the twin themes of silence and listening. Our choice of these themes arose rather organically. Some of the children were having a hard time listening while we were reading the day’s selected story to them. The challenge with listening seemed most directly related to their inability to settle into silence. So, we decided to address the children’s behavioral challenges by exploring notions of silence and listening in the very readings and lessons that required some modest level of silence and listening from them in order to be successful.
I remember the day in January when I first asked the question, “Does anyone know what silence is?” We had a group of mostly younger kids that day (ages five and below), so I was not surprised that nobody had anything to offer. But silence is a concept easily explained and demonstrated, and they caught on quickly. We followed that discussion with a short meditation I had used with them before. Now, however, I was using it more strategically to help build an experiential base to attach to the concept of silence that I had just introduced.
To begin this meditation, we all, adults and children alike, put one hand up in the air. Then, I played a loud bong sound, one that gradually faded across a period of time. When we could no longer hear the bong sound, we put down our hands. The hands do not all come down at the same time. I have noticed that we 70 somethings tend to put our hands down before the children put their hands down. Hummmm . . .? Once our hands are no longer in the air, we sit in silence for as long as we can, until somebody just has to talk. I am reluctant to admit sometimes that person who just must break the silence is me.
A few months after that initial introduction to silence, mostly as a spiritual practice in meditation, Lindsay was helping the children draft their own Covenant of Right Relations, just like the one we adults use to guide our ways of showing up for and being in relations with each other. This activity provided a very practical opportunity to advance the children’s thinking about and experiences with our twin themes of silence and listening. One of the items on the children’s draft covenant is the notion that we should listen to each other, especially when we are speaking from our hearts, as we do when we are sharing our joys and sorrows. Building this reminder into our weekly joys and sorrows ritual gives this commitment to silence and deep listening a prominent and valued place in our upstairs children’s service each Sunday. Our children are obviously growing, spiritually and socially, in their appreciation for the importance of silence and listening.
Since that first day in January, when I asked a simple question about the nature of silence, I have attempted to address the silence and listening theme each time we meet, often by reading a book that touches on issues related to these themes. My favorite book, one that is resonant with our UUCM commitment to deep listening, is The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld. Its message is that when a friend is in distress (such as, our friend’s big and beautiful creation made from wooden blocks unexpectedly falls to the ground), the best way to help is not to tell that friend how to feel or what to do. Rather, the way to help, the rabbit’s way, is to just sit with our friend in silence while they process their loss, recover their equanimity, and ultimately make their own plan for how to move forward. What a lovely reminder of the healing power of silence and listening.
If imagination is what you are looking for at UUCM, then look no further. Stop number one for you should be our Kids’ Connection program that happens upstairs on Sunday mornings. Each Sunday after the short kids’ service that we hold upstairs in our sanctuary, we proceed into a suite of rooms that is our imaginary UU world. The range of materials that have been chosen to support artistic creativity, dramatic play, and story telling are impressive indeed. I thought I would make this essay a pictorial display of the children and their imaginations at work. Enjoy!
Our April Soul Matters theme of joy is a joy in and of itself. Right now, it is providing me with the opportunity to wallow in the joy that our UUCM children, their grownups, and my beloved Family Ministry Team mates bring to my life. I will use the rest of this article simply to itemize a few of the joys that I routinely experience as I serve the families of UUCM.
Joy #1: As you likely are already aware, we currently serve a group of children ranging in age from 18 months to 10 years old. We run a version of the one room school house upstairs. Multi-age grouping of children often brings out the very best in those children lucky enough to experience it. I am filled with joy when I witness a 5-year-old boy stop what he is doing to assist a toddler with her activity, and then openly states “she is a baby and we need to help her.” Similarly, joy arises for me when I watch a ten year old girl spending much of her time upstairs cuddling and entertaining a toddler. Our older children frequently become nurturers because the younger children are with us. And our very youngest children watch the older children, following and copying them, thereby reaching beyond their current developmental levels in an effort to keep up. I have watched with amazement as children not yet three years old learn how to build our alter by watching their older, more experienced peers do so. The benefits of having an 8-year range in our children’s ages are on full display upstairs on Sunday mornings. Watching our children’s interactions play out in the various settings we have upstairs is a constant source of wonder, and yes joy, for me.
Joy #2: Gradually, the average number of children attending Kids’ Connection on Sunday mornings is increasing. A year ago, we were averaging 2.5 kids per Sunday, with some Sundays having no children in attendance . We are now averaging around 6 children each Sunday, with several Sundays of late having 8, 9, or even 10 children in attendance. I am filled with joy not only because our numbers are on the rise, but also because of why they are on the rise. Several of our long-time, core families have been encouraging their neighbors, friends, work colleagues and extended family members to bring their children to our Kids’ Connection program. I am so pleased that these long-time, core families have found the program to be of enough value that they would recommend it to others. And I am especially tickled by the instantaneous connections between the grownups that come along with this version of growth. More and more I see the grownups socializing together when they come upstairs to pick up their children. I am filled with joy to know that the program is special enough that our families want to share it with others.
Joy # 3: I want everybody at UUCM to know about the many joys of working with Lindsay, Linda, Corrie, Jenny, and Shannon. These women, who are central not only to Kids’ Connection but to UUCM generally, are the sort of people who make other people’s lives better, easier, and happier. You can count on them to show up, and to do so with warmth, enthusiasm, creativity, and competence. In January and February, I was sidelined on two separate Sundays when I was scheduled to be upstairs with the children. All I had to do was throw my dilemma out there in an email, and these women came up with a plan to cover for me, twice! I am actually having a hard time finding the words to adequately express the depth of my confidence in, respect for, and love of these women; they are the foundation of my UUCM life. I can only wish for you and your UUCM life the kind of joy that I have found in my connection with the members of my Family Ministry Team.
Let me just end by saying—if you would like to get yourself some of this Family Ministry joy that I have been describing in this article, please connect with me (Cheryl Spaulding) or Lindsay Dunckel. You can do so at FamilyMinistry@uugrassvalley.org or in person, upstairs or downstairs, whenever you see one or the other of us.
Our Kids’ Connection program has an intentional design, one that is consistent with our goal of promoting feelings of TRUST in our young charges. One overarching design principle that permeates our program is best captured in the phrase CHOICE WITHIN STRUCTURE. Competing philosophies of education often are geared toward one or the other of those two constructs—choice or structure. In contrast, we believe that choice and structure are symbiotically significant in the ways that they help children develop trust in themselves, as well as in the people and practices that constitute our Kids’ Connection program.
Let’s start with STRUCTURE. Structure gives our program a recognizable and predictable form. When children can predict how each Sunday morning will unfold, they learn to trust the program and the people who run it. When new children join us, they are understandably unsure of themselves. They do not yet trust that this experience will be a positive one. But after they have visited with us a few times, we see them quickly getting involved by collaboratively building our altar, sharing a joy or sorrow, creating a pretend meal in our kids’ kitchen, or making a piece of art at our table full of art supplies. Routines and rituals, by their very nature, are repeating, allowing children to understand on their own what is expected of them and how to fit in. This ability to figure out on their own how to operate within the inherent structure promotes in our children a trust in their own abilities. Even when the routines and rituals are not ones a child particularly enjoys, the fact that they are predictable helps them cope with the challenge of getting through the activity successfully. Many, many decades ago, when I was teaching high school English, a particularly challenging student said to me with a defiant tone, “I really hate these vocabulary assignments you give us.” Then, a brief moment later, his defiance shifted to a tone of acceptance when he said, “but they only come on Wednesdays and I can live with that.” He trusted me, my instructional program, and himself because he knew the routines surrounding those undesirable vocab assignments. Imagine how much more threatening those assignments would have been if he had not known when they were likely to pop up.
Now for CHOICE, what is its contribution to fostering children’s trust in themselves, us, and our program? Structure is a foundational element in our program. Without it, or with an insufficient amount of it, the children’s experiences in the program would be some version of chaotic.
Chaos does not promote trust. But by itself, structure can also be limiting. We want our children to build on the trust that structure promotes by taking ownership of their experiences in Kids’ Connection, pursuing their own interests, expressing their own thoughts, creating their own pieces of art or scenarios for play. When children make choices about how to operate within a thoughtfully provided structure, they learn to trust their own agency.
One ritual activity in our Kids’ Connection program that provides many opportunities for the children to make meaningful choices within a well-articulated structure happens immediately when we enter Our Sanctuary upstairs. The first experience of the day is building our altar.
This activity is well structured. It must be the first activity of the day in order for the following activities to have a space to play out. There are a few basic rules to follow in that certain ritual pieces are always displayed on the altar, although where exactly they are placed is open for the children’s determination. Beyond those few ritual pieces that always go on the altar, however, the options for decorating the altar are wide ranging. Our altars are like snowflakes—no two are ever alike. Watching the children decorate the altar with their specific choices is like gaining a little window into their minds and hearts. Some of them are fascinated by the light of the candles and battery operated, mini-chalice flames. Some of them want the surface of the altar to be covered with stars and stones and beads and shells. Some of them like to place on the altar larger, more sculptural items from nature like pinecones and feathers. Some are fascinated by and want to play with the water we pour into the vessel for our joys and sorrows stones. Our children make their own choices for the altar, place those choices carefully and strategically on the altar, and then step back to appreciate how their contributions helped to create this important part of our UU ritual. This adds to their sense of trust. They trust that
they are important to us and that their ideas and creations are important to us. . We trust them to be our co-creators of the Kids’ Connection program. This is a bi-directional form of trust that is meaningful and genuine, for children and adults alike.
Examples of how CHOICE WITHIN STRUCTURE permeate our Kids’ Connection program are too numerous to begin to catalogue for you here. Suffice it to say that structure and choice are two defining features of our Kids’ Connection program and taken together they are greater than the sum of their parts. You can TRUST me on that!!
What is silence? And how is silence related to listening? While not exactly the same thing, silence and listening do overlap each other. Maybe one definition of silence could be eliminating the noises or sounds that we make so that we can take note of, or listen to, noises or sounds that we are not making. Sometimes those noises come from outside of ourselves— such as winds howling, dogs barking, or friends talking. But we can also listen to those ephemeral visitors in our consciousness that come, unbidden—the nearly constant flow of feelings, thoughts, memories that arise, stay awhile, and dissipate, all on their own.
So why all this focus on silence? Well, in Kids’ Connection on Sunday mornings, I am planning to include more opportunities for the children to learn about, experience, even play with the concept of silence. We have already incorporated a kid-friendly meditation experience that introduces the concept of silence. We all sit, with one hand raised in the air. Then, we play an extended sound—a chime—that lasts for about ten seconds before fading away. We keep our hands in the air until we cannot hear the sound anymore. Interestingly, the hands come down one at a time. Finally, we attempt to extend that moment of silence after the chime ends. The operative word there is “attempt.” I like this meditative sequence because it starts out with silence brought on by listening to sounds from our physical environment (the chime) and ends with an opportunity to shift our listening to noises from our psychological environment (our thoughts, feelings, memories).
A few weeks ago, after completing this meditative exercise, I read the children a book entitled The Silence Slips In by Alison Hughes and Ninon Pelletier. In this book, silence is somewhat anthropomorphized. It has a face and ears—although it looks more like a giant bunny than a human being. This larger, cloud-like being with a face and ears drifts into various situations that call for silence (e.g., bed time, moments of frustration, time for cuddling with a dog). When the silence slips in, the imposing, green being with a face, known as Noise, steps out of the picture to make room for Silence. This is a lovely book that makes a clear statement about how silence and noise move back and forth, taking turns, throughout our days, throughout our lives.
My hope is to build gradually the children’s understandings about what silence is and how it can be valuable for individuals and groups of people to know when and how to let silence slip in.
Last year our Family Ministry Team was laser focused on reconceptualizing and implementing a new version of our Kids’ Connection program. At our Kids’ Connection Open House last month, we officially went public with the results of our program development efforts. The new program has a new look with additional spaces and materials, as well as with rituals and routines that are well established now. We are very proud of it.
Now, I want to share with you another aspect of our program development, one that is not so visible to those who visit us upstairs. In addition to our new spaces, materials, rituals and routines, our program also consists of the adults who spend an hour or more interacting with our UUCM children in a wide variety of contexts. This other form of program development, commonly known as staff development, aims to enhance the knowledge and skills of the people who bring the program to the children each week. Three of us have been exploring ways that we can enhance our interactions with our children by supporting their development—socially, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually.
In early August, we three attended a webinar entitled “Using Everyday Conversations to Nurture Play and creativity in Young Children.” The presenter, Rebecca Rolland, EdD, is a certified speech language pathologist who specializes in children’s oral and written language development. Her presentation targeted teachers and caregivers of young children. We fit right in with that target audience, as we consider ourselves to be straddling that line between teacher and caregiver every Sunday.
In a nutshell, Rolland’s message in the webinar was that how teachers and caregivers talk with children can serve to open up opportunities for their development. She provided numerous examples of how conversations between children and adults can promote the having, exploring, and sharing of big, interesting, and wonderful ideas. She showed how open ended conversations with adults can support children as they learn to solve problems and show each other compassion. I left the webinar wanting to know more; so I ordered her book entitled “The Art of Talking with Children: The Simple Keys to Nurturing Kindness, Creativity, and Confidence in Kids.” Unlike the webinar, the book’s target audience is parents. I found, however, that her message and examples in the book were thoroughly applicable to the time we spend upstairs with our UUCM children.
One idea we have adopted from her webinar and book is what she calls the “Three E’s for Rich Talk.” According to Rolland, “rich talk” is a form of talk characterized by open-endedness, deep and patient listening, and a mutuality or reciprocity that engages both child and adult. The Three E’s are a sort of guide that adults can rely upon in their efforts to create more of this “rich talk.” Specifically, Rolland’s Three E’s are EXPAND, EXPLORE, AND EVALUATE.
In order to help children EXPAND their thinking, an adult might say to a child recounting a recent event—“Tell me more.” The adult who wants to help children EXPLORE ideas beyond those currently under consideration might prod with “I wonder what would happen if we did it this way instead of that way. What do you think would happen?” And adults can promote EVALUATION by asking a child who has just resolved a conflict with another child “What might you do next time you have this problem?”, following up their answer with “Why would you do that?” Examples of linguistic prompts that promote “rich talk” are innumerable and make conversations with children authentic and rewarding. In order to remind ourselves of the Three E’s while we are actually interacting with children, we have posted signs in the rooms upstairs where we spend the most time with the children.
So, the task of growing and improving our Kids’ Connection program is ongoing. We recognize that the success of the program lies not only in the spaces, materials, rituals, and routines that shape the experiences our children have on Sunday mornings. Success also resides in the knowledge, skills, and intentions of the adults who mediate the ways the children connect with the environments we have created for them.
The Beat Café and Jam Café are back from hiatus! The last Tuesday of the month (except holidays), join MC Paul at the Beat Café: an open mic night for poets and writers. On the last Thursday of the month (except holidays), DJ Paul hosts the Jam Café: a casual gathering of musicians playing familiar songs on a wide assortment of instruments. For both events, doors open at 6pm and the party starts at 6:30. You are welcome and encouraged to bring snacks, beverages, and friends!
