Children's Religious Education
Nursery Care   Religious Education Classes   Our Ministry with Youth

Learning Together, Growing Together, Supporting Families
UUFS seeks to create a caring environment for people at all ages and stages of life. We offer a Family Service from 9:30am - 9:50am. This is a time where the children are invited to participate in the service as Worship Associates and Chalice lighters and readers. Throughout the year a variety of social events provide a chance for families to bond over conversation and activities of interest. Our minister is available for pastoral visits with parents, kids, and families.
Children’s Religious Education at UUFS
Why send your children to Sunday school? It's a good question - one that some children ask their parents almost every week. At UUFS, we think children need a place where the focus is not on who is the most athletic, who gets the best grades or who has the coolest electronics. Our Sunday school provides a community where the focus is on listening, learning, and caring.

Analysts of education say that in any teaching situation there is an explicit and an implicit curriculum. The explicit curriculum is the official topic. In our Sunday school this might be Unitarian Universalist history and values, Christian and Jewish heritage, and other world religions. The implicit curriculum is what we teach by how we act - the way we group students and set up classrooms, the activities we choose, the way we transmit information and the way we treat each other. At UUFS we believe the implicit curriculum is as important as the explicit curriculum. Our goal is to create a space where children and adults speak gently, listen carefully, and care for one another.

Nursery Care
A warm and loving environment is provided for our very youngest children each Sunday by our caregiver, Sheli Singleton and volunteers from the congregation. Parents are encouraged to attend our Family Service with their young children. Child care is also available.
Religious Education Classes
K through 2nd Grade Curriculum – Treasure Hunting
The curriculum of Treasure Hunting was chosen to involve children in the exciting search for the meaning in life at the level of their understanding. Each week through games, crafts, songs and stories the children explore the meaning behind a Unitarian Universalist principle or value. Central to the Treasure Hunting curriculum is the class treasure chest, as well as each child's treasure chest that she/he makes to take home. Every week the children make or receive an object to put in their chest which is symbolic of those week's principles. The treasures discovered throughout the year include the importance of each other, the power of feelings, the joy of friendship, and the excitement of the search for truth, the Unitarian Universalist heritage, and the interdependence of people and the fragile harmony of nature. In the end, what the Treasure Hunting curriculum hopes to inspire is a gentle way of knowing. Only with the eyes informed by love and respect can we find life's treasures.

3rd through 5th Grade Curriculum – Holidays and Holy Days
The chosen holidays in this curriculum lift up the values we affirm or address as universal human responses to life. We honor both the diversity and particularity of cultural traditions, and at the same time the commonality of the human condition. Holidays are the natural age-old vehicle of religious socialization and their festivities tell a story which children absorb with delight, through experience far more than through words. Traditions are woven from decorations, colors, costumes, songs, foods, ceremonies, and rituals, and how memories, beliefs, values, hope and reverence are transmitted. A holiday is not just something to talk about; it is something to experience and share. We will learn about how other people think about God, prayer and the what other faiths believe. Our children will affirm their own Unitarian Universalism beliefs and that "UNDER THE SKY ALL PEOPLE ARE ONE FAMILY".

6th and 7th Grade Curriculum – Amazing Grace Tapestry of Faith
Amazing Grace intends to help sixth graders understand right and wrong and act on their new understanding. Its purpose is to equip them for moving safely and productively through the middle- and high school years, when they will be continually tugged toward both ends of the ethics continuum. Through their involvement in Amazing Grace, youth will come to recognize and depend on their Unitarian Universalist identity and resources as essential to their movement toward understanding, independence, and fulfillment of personal promise. The description of this curriculum is from the Tapestry of Faith web site. Pease see the Tapestry of Faith web site for more information.

Our Ministry with Youth
For many youth, especially those raised in Unitarian Universalist communities, the principles, values, and theologies of Unitarian Universalism are in the bones. A Place of Wholeness is an opportunity to examine their faith journeys to better understand themselves in the context of Unitarian Universalism. Every workshop begins with the same opening reading, the last lines of which are: "We are part of this living tradition. Through it we become whole, and through us it becomes whole". It is this sense of interdependence that the program reinforces. There are several overarching themes that structure this program. Wholeness-the primary theme of the program-is defined as the way in which our Unitarian Universalist "outsides" match our Unitarian Universalist "insides" by understanding, professing, and living our faith. Wholeness is also important in the sense that each person is integral to the wholeness of the Unitarian Universalist community. In addition to their Sunday morning classes, students in grades 9 through 12 are invited to participate a in youth group, which offers movie nights, field trips, and other opportunities for fun and service. Students in grades 9+ are also welcome to help in classes for younger children, attend worship, or participate in leading worship. Other opportunities for volunteering in the congregation and other special projects may also be arranged in consultation with the minister and Director of Religious Education. The description of this curriculum is from the Tapestry of Faith web site. Pease see the Tapestry of Faith web site for more information

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