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.