• Optional: Simple items such as a toy, a book, or a blanket for role play

Children role play sharing and not sharing. They discuss the value in sharing and sharing as a sign of their UU faith.

Ask participants if they have ever seen little children struggle over a toy or something else they will not share. Say that this is natural: When very young children want something someone else has, they do not understand why they cannot have it and they are focused only on themselves. Brainstorm scenarios where this might happen. You might suggest siblings arguing over sitting on a parent's lap, two children trying to play with the same toy, fighting over whose turn it is to play a game, or a child with candy who gives some to one friend, but not to everyone. Let a few volunteers role-play scenarios of not sharing.

Now say, in these words or your own:

You are all getting older. You have learned to think not only about making yourself happy, but about making other people happy, too. You have had to learn to share. It is not always easy. Everyone has to learn to share, and keep relearning it, too-even adults sometimes have a hard time sharing.

Invite the group to demonstrate how they have learned, now that they are older, to share. Ask for volunteers to re-enact scenarios, this time with sharing instead of without. Then, ask for examples of what sharing looks like now, in their own lives as older children. Prompt:

• When was a time you loaned a friend or sibling a game, or a book?
• Have you sat in a crowded auditorium, or ridden a crowded bus, and had to share space with someone?
• Sharing can mean working together. Have you shared a job, like folding laundry or cleaning your room, with someone at home? Have you shared the work on a project at school?

Now say:

The older you get, the more ways there are to share. When you are a grown-up, you might share an apartment with someone. You might share a car that you can drive when it is your turn. You might have money of your own that you sometimes share with others. You will have jobs to do with other people, where you will share the work, and also the credit when you get it done.

Invite the children to role play sharing, as adults.

Ask:

• What is easy to share? What is hard?
• Is it harder to share something when you only a little of it?
• Can you tell us about a time that it was hard for you to share, but you did it?
• Can you tell us about a time someone shared with you, when you know it was hard for them to do it?
• What do you share with your family? With your friends or neighbors? Can you think of something you share with your town, or even the world? [Sidewalks and roads, public transportation, food grown on farms or fish caught in the sea, books from the library, air, water, our planet.]
• What is shared at our congregation? [Crayons, hymnbooks, chairs, food.] What would it look like if people at the congregation would not share? [If participants seem interested, role play congregants not sharing.]
• Do you think sharing is a way to be UU every day? Why or why not?

Affirm:

We share because sharing is one way we can make our world more fair, so everyone has something, as opposed to some people having a lot and others having nothing. We share because it usually more fun to share than to be alone. We share because sharing is one way we can take care of each other.