Session I: Valuing Our Family Members
Who is in my family?
What do they like?
What is important to each
of them?
What do we enjoy together?
Preparation
- Read the background material for teaching and for your specific activity.
- Prepare a welcoming letter and deliver it to the church by the Tuesday before your first Sunday so copies can be sent to your class members.
- Prepare the background for your bulletin board or boards.
- Read the entire session plan. Make sure you have all of the needed materials for your group’s plan by obtaining them or requesting them by Wednesday afternoon. If you purchase supplies, please bring the receipts on Sunday to request reimbursement.
- Make name tags for everyone on your class list. Prepare extra blank name tags for newcomers.
- Be conscious of who the sixth and seventh graders in your group are. Encourage them to take leadership during this term—leading a game, helping with the supplies, working with younger kids, etc. For this week, perhaps one or two of them would be willing to lead the opening game or help with distributing name tags.
- Choose an extra game from the games section to use if you have extra time. Make sure you have the needed supplies for it.
- Find a pretty cloth to place under the chalice for the closing circle.
- When you arrive on Sunday, set up your classroom for the game; set out any materials you have for your class’ main activity.
Session Plan
Opening Worship
Worship will always include a time for singing, a time for sharing joys and sorrows, and a story. You will find a brief description of the story in each week’s session plan. This week the story will be “All Kinds of Families” by Norma Simon (excerpts).
“Families are people who share their lives and their stories, who love and support one another.”
Welcome
Encourage people to claim their name tag as they enter the room. Then gather everyone into a circle. Welcome everyone to the new term. Introduce yourself and your co-teacher(s). Tell the children that you will be learning about UU Family Values this term?about how we can live well together with our families.
Game (time permitting)
“I Like People Who...” (Circle Game)
Introductions: Invite the children to introduce themselves by saying their name and one thing they enjoy doing with their family. They can show their pictures if they brought them. Collect the photos for posting on your bulletin board with the kids’ names.
Main Activity
Mention the guiding questions from the beginning of this session. Explain that you will be exploring these questions this morning. Then begin your activity from the list below. It is always fine to use another group’s activity along with your own!
Crafts
You will be making mobiles. You will need wire*, poster board or precut poster-board shapes, scissors, magazines with pictures to illustrate loved things or activities, wire cutters, needle-nose pliers (at least two or three pairs), and thread or fishing line. The kids will make mobiles of their families, with each member represented by a single piece of wire (arm) for him or herself. A picture or drawing of each person will be glued to a poster-board shape and that piece of poster board will be hung from one piece of the thread or fishing line. Then, poster-board-mounted pictures of one or more things that person loves will be strung together and hung from another piece of thread or fishing line. When you are finishing the mobile, the two pieces of thread or fishing line representing each person and their loved items will be hung from the loops at either end of the wire (or arm) so that they balance each other.
Use the backs of the shapes, too. This week, focus attention on creating the individual arms representing individual family members. You will be completing them and putting the mobile together next week. Encourage the kids to think about who is part of their family. They might include pets, family friends who seem like part of the family, etc., if time allows! Invite them to bring photos of family members next week if the kids don’t want to draw them. Note: Siblings can work together or separately, whichever they choose.
*Technical details: Use heavy-gauge wire—10-, 12-, or even 14-gauge craft wire should do it. Or, you can cut the straight bottoms from wire coat hangers. You will need good wire cutters to cut the pieces, but they will be very durable. Use sturdy needle-nose pliers to make a loop at each end of the wire pieces. If you have mostly younger children, you may want to make the end loops in a bunch of wires before class time, or you may want to use sticks or branches with a slight bend in them (straight sticks are hard to balance) instead of wires.
Cooking
Invite the kids to list all the members of their family, and their favorite foods. Are there some shared favorites? Have the kids share which recipes they brought, if any. Explain that this term you will be making many family-favorite foods together, and thinking about ways that these foods are important to your family. Share some of the family favorites and write them up on newsprint. Encourage the kids to write a brief commentary for their family favorites if time allows. For example: “Applesauce Cake. On Saturday mornings, we love to eat this straight out of the oven with spiced tea. Lisa and Tom dip it in the tea, but they don’t drink the crumbs that settle to the bottom. We all wash our own cups!”
Cook a simple favorite food or two from your own families, focusing upon foods that require lots of tasks to be done simultaneously, such as fruit salad, applesauce, or punch. Or choose foods that consist of individual portions that can be designed by a single child like sandwiches or sundaes.
Note: If your recipe is for an item that requires baking, you may want to move the cooking to the very beginning, and do the introducing, game-playing, and talking while the item bakes.
Drama
In advance: make up cards that say “mom,” “dad,” “stepmom,” “stepdad,” “cat,” “dog,” “bird,” “girl,” and “boy,” and numbers 0 to 20 in large writing. Make at least two or three of each, and have extra cards for additions. Make a tableau of each child’s family. Have the kids think of something that each member of their family enjoys, and something that the whole family or each sub-family loves to do together. Then the kids can direct their own family or families. Start by having the kids select the appropriate cards, e.g. “mom,” “dad,” “stepmom,” or, “girl, 10”; “boy, 3”; boy, 1”; and “cat”. Then recruit some actors to act out each character doing a favorite thing. Encourage everyone to guess what the activity is and which family member is doing it. Don’t identify the characters until everyone has finished acting out the individual roles. Then have everyone identify the individuals. Finally, have actors portray the whole family or sub-family doing activities and have everyone guess what the activities are. In the case of families where there has been a divorce, have family groups consist of the kids, one parent, and his/her partner (if there is one), as well as the kids, their other parent, and his/her partner (if there is one). Note: If there are siblings in your group, encourage them to work together, but don’t force the issue. If they would prefer to work on their own, that is fine too!
Outdoors
Explain that you will be taking a walk and that you will be walking in silence and in single file. Tell the kids that during the walk, you would like them to think about the members of their family and to make lists about them. Make sure that the kids who want to bring paper and pencils for making the lists have time to get these items before they leave. Be sure the kids are appropriately dressed. Plan to lead the walk with one teacher at the front of the line and one at the end. When you are ready to leave, ask the kids to think about the members of their family and to list them on a piece of paper. Next, invite the kids to think about what each family member would like best of all the things they see on their walk. Explain to the kids that they should write those things down or remember them until they get back inside. If the kids find this confusing, explain that favored things can be anything from a certain kind of weather, to an activity, an object, or a place.
After the walk, come back inside for hot cocoa (prepare with an electric tea kettle), and either share your discoveries or, even better, depending on your group’s energy, spend a few minutes writing tiny (index-card-size) gift cards for family members, e.g. “Today I saw ____ and I thought of you because _____.” Encourage the children to decorate the items they wrote down for each family member with a simple line drawing either beside the item or, if they fold the card, on the outside panel.
Writing
Distribute pencils, notebooks, and manila envelopes to the children. Ask that they write their name on their notebook and envelope and explain that anything they write will be their own and that you will invite them to share but that they don’t have to. Tell the kids that next they will write name poems about each family member. Explain that they begin by writing their family member’s first name or family title (i.e., “mom”) with one letter under the other to make a vertical row. Then ask them to use the first letter on each line to write a line of the name poem until they have used all the letters. Encourage them to use sentences or words that express who the person is and what he or she loves. Provide several thesauruses. If some of the children finish early, let them know that they can work on a poem for their whole family using their last name or names.
When everyone is finished, encourage the kids to share if they are willing. Explain the sharing rules: “Do not make comments on each others’ writing, but listen with full attention and without interrupting.” After everyone who wants to has shared, invite the kids to discuss ideas, if they would like to. After the sharing, have the children place their notebooks and pencils in the envelopes and leave them with you.
Clean-up and Closing
Try to leave enough time at the end of the class for the group to clean up together—this not only saves you some work, but encourages our kids to become good community members! When the room is clean, gather in a circle, place your chalice on a nice cloth in the center, and light it. Say something about the week and the topic, for example: “We light this chalice in honor of our new learning community, and in honor of each of our unique families.” Explain that each week they will have an opportunity to share something they didn’t like and something they especially liked with the group, and to place a river stone near the chalice.
Anyone who chooses can pass on participating in one or both parts. Pass the basket of objects (river stones, for instance), and begin by modeling the activity yourself. Say, for example, “I didn’t like the rain, which kept us from going outside. I especially liked meeting all of you for the first time.” Then place your object near the chalice. When everyone is finished, explain that each of you will take home the things you worked on in church school. Then, explain the task for the week. Say, for example, “This week, be detectives! Try to discover something that each member of your family enjoys that you DIDN’T know about before.” Invite questions about the task, then conclude by saying something like: “May the light of this chalice remain in our hearts until we meet again,” and blow out the chalice.
Snack Time
Distribute the snack to the children. Enjoy it together! Collect their name tags for safekeeping before they go. Distribute family handouts.
Last updated on Monday, March 5, 2007.
