Families

We are gearing up for a new year of Kids’ Connection. Last year, the Family Ministry Team focused on issues related to program development and implementation. We re-conceptualized our Kids’ Connection program, experimenting with alternative versions of it, making changes based upon how our children responded to our offerings, and exploring new ways of using the available space upstairs.

Today, we are very proud of what we have to offer the children of UUCM. Now our priorities are shifting from last year’s focus on program development to a new focus on increasing the number of children who attend our Kids’ Connection Sunday morning program, as well as the frequency of attendance for those who are already a part of our Kids’ Connection family.

For those of you who would like to know more about our Kids’ Connection program— including the philosophy inherent in it, as well as the specific rituals, routines, and developmental opportunities for the children that are the heart the program on any given Sunday—I encourage you to watch the video of the adults’ “downstairs” service from August 11, 2024. (You can find it by looking through our past services. It is entitled “Upstairs/Downstairs: Living and Learning Together.”) In my presentation during that service, I shared with the congregation a rather extended description of the Kids’ Connection program that we spent the last year conceptualizing and implementing. Our process over the last year was very exploratory and experimental. We are proud of this program in its current iteration, AND we are committed to continuing to let it evolve in order to better meet the needs of our UUCM children and the UUCM community as a whole.

This month, September of 2024, we are showcasing this new version of Kids’ Connection with two special Sunday events.

Bring Your Grandkids to Church Day (on Grandparents’ Day)!!

Sunday, September 8, 10:30 am—Kids will convene upstairs in Kids’ Connection rooms to hear stories about grandparents and create some special pieces of “art” for their grandparents.

Kids’ Connection Open House

Sunday, September 15, noon – 1pm—After the downstairs service, grown ups will reconnect with their children upstairs for the Open House. Grown-ups and their children will learn about our Kids’ Connection program, participate in some UU-inspired rituals and routines, and most importantly, meet other families who participate in the Kids’ Connection program. Lunch will be served.

Please, bring your children to these two special services. We are looking forward to building this little community of amazing children and their grownups.

I bet if we were to gather a group of us together for a discussion about some of our fondest memories from childhood, many of those memories would be related to how we spent our summers. My childhood summer memories mostly involve palling around with neighborhood friends—participating in seemingly endless sessions of hide-n-seek or tag-you’re-it, usually at dusk; competing against a very best friend all afternoon in impossibly long games of Chutes and Ladders or Monopoly; swimming all afternoon at the local high school pool and coming home thoroughly sunburned and ready to do it again the next day; walking half a mile (which seemed more like three miles) to the local branch of the town’s library to return a pile of books and get a new pile to replace it; riding bikes from one school yard recreation program to another, looking for opportunities to engage with the recreation leaders, who were fabulously charismatic high school students whom we adored. Your specific activities were certainly not identical to mine, but they likely had some of the same feelings of open-endedness, possibility, and connection that mine had.

Shift to the task of putting together a summer program for pre- and elementary school UU children. How great it would be to capture some of that magic—the open-endedness, possibility, and connection—that we recall from our long ago summers, in my case well over 60 years ago. That goal may be too ambitious for a once a week program in a moderately sized UU community in the years following a pandemic that shifted everyone’s ways of engaging with their world. But we on the Family Ministry Team are still holding the significance of memorable summer experiences in mind as we build the lessons each week for the children who show up to spend an hour engaging with us. The scale of our operation may be small, but our intentions are robust and heartfelt.

Through the month of August, we are continuing to use the UU Summer Curriculum entitled Can Do Summer. So far, this summer we have constructed and launched paper airplanes, built a fairy house, and explored all things fishy. Before the official publication of this newsletter occurs, we will be building blanket forts and exploring our bodies as percussion instruments. In August we will be building junk sculptures, making our way through obstacle courses, designing tooth pick architecture, and perhaps creating our own mini-golf experience.

Let me end by saying, we are always looking for people who would enjoy spending a Sunday with us in Kids Connection once in a while. We have a core group of dedicated people who have been helping out as second teachers for a long time now, and we so very much appreciate them. If we could double that core group of people from about 4 to 5 to about 8 to 10, then no one person would be called upon to serve as a second teacher more than once every two months. The role of the second teacher is to be a presence in the room and help out as needed. Mostly, it is a chance to enjoy the children. We hope that a few more of you will find your way to this opportunity to serve our UUCM community. It is a relatively low pressure/high reward way to serve UUCM. If you would like to explore this low pressure/high reward opportunity to serve, contact us at familyministry@uugrassvalley.org. Or, better yet, touch
bases some Sunday (before or after the service) with Cheryl Spaulding, Lindsay Dunckel, or
Rene Wiley. We would be glad to share with you some the joy that we experience by spending
time with the youngest UU’s in this community.

ACTIVITIES THIS MONTH INCLUDE:
UUCM Camping Trip, August 18-20 at Plumas Eureka State Park.
Forward questions to Shannon at shannondooleymiller@uugrassvalley.org.

Over the last few months, as we have been redesigning our Kids Connection spaces and rituals, we have been moved to consider how our Kids Connection program might affect our UUCM children in the long run. What will our children remember about their time in Kids Connection at UUCM? How might their memories of Kids Connection influence the people they grow up to be? […]

Generosity is such a fundamental value of Unitarian Universalism. We are called upon to share our talents, our time, our energy, and our financial resources for the good of each other, our community, and the hole wide world.

Learning to be generous starts in childhood. Children experience their very first lessons on generosity when the adults around them extend generosity to them. In other words, by being on the receiving end of generosity, children begin to learn why and how to be generous themselves. Here at UUCM, the treasured volunteers who spend some of their Sunday mornings up in Kids Connection with us are teaching our children about generosity. They generously share with our children their time and their energy, as well as their deep knowledge and many talents.

But the opportunities to learn about generosity in our Kids Connection program do not stop there. Almost every week, our children are challenged to embody the UU value for generosity. As they interact with each other and with some of the more desirable materials we have in the Kids Connection setting, invariably two of them will want to play with the same toy or tool. Those are the moments when a calm, caring, and attentive adult can help the children understand the feelings they are experiencing, at the same time that they learn to identify and use strategies for responding generously to each other, even when someone else wants to cut short their opportunities to play with the stethoscope or the toy hammer or a Buddha board. Other opportunities to learn about generosity occur when we (the adults) sit down with them to share snacks, when we model the use of kind and supportive words, or when we give our undivided attention to their thoughts and concerns.

Generosity—it is a UU way of being that is on display in our Kids Connection setting each Sunday. We welcome adults who would like to share their time, energy, and talents with our children on an occasional Sunday morning. Talk to Cheryl Spaulding or Lindsay Dunckel if you want to know more about how you might contribute to our Kids Connection program.

This month’s theme is a juicy one—heritage.

I decided to begin my preparations for this article by looking up the numerous definitions of heritage. There was one upon which I chose to focus—“valued objects and qualities, such as cultural traditions . . ., that have been passed down from previous generations.” UU’s have many beloved objects and qualities (and I might add rituals), that make up our heritage. Included among those objects, qualities, and rituals are our chalices (including our rituals of lighting and extinguishing them), our sharing of joys and sorrows, our commitments to social justice, and our respect for theological diversity. Our heritage is a rich and meaningful one, and our efforts to find creative and sustainable ways of passing our heritage on to the next generation of UU’s is the very heart of our work in Family Ministry.

The issues that we face each time we meet together as a Team and each time we meet with our children and youth in Kids Connection or teen meetings center on a few important questions. How do young people come to identify with UU values, rituals, and traditions? And how can we (the adults) work in such a way that our words and actions make our UU heritage clear, accessible, and engaging for our youth? This effort to highlight and share the some times intangible attributes of our UU heritage while interacting with our children and youth is important work. It is one of the many ways UU’s can touch the future.

If you would like to know more about the Family Ministry Team and the many opportunities for UUCM adults to find purpose and meaning inherent in our Team’s work, please reach out to one or the other of us—Cheryl Spaulding, Lindsay Dunckel, and Rene Wiley. We would be delighted to discuss with you ways that you might participate in building this program into one that is ready to serve our current group of children, as well as the children who will one Sunday show up with their parents ready to explore Unitarian Universalism for the first time.
TOGETHER WE CAN TOUCH THE FUTURE!!

Activities This Month Include:
Building and Grounds Workday: October 21, 9am-12pm. All ages welcome. Age appropriate
task will be made available for children.
Harvest Festival: Saturday, October 21, 3 pm to 6 pm, at UUCM. $10 for adults, kids are free.
Come enjoy music, face painting, apple crafts, corn hole, chili and corn bread, and more,
including lots of UUCM opportunities to connect with each other.