It is time to register your kids for Religious Education Programming for the 2024 - 2025 Church Year!
Please use the form to register your child for RE. You will need to submit one form per child to be registered. You do not have to be registered for your child to participate in an RE class -- all children who come to church on a Sunday morning will be welcomed in class. But if you are coming regularly, we will ask you to register your child. And if you register soon, that is helpful in our planning process.
Here is some more information about what we have planned for RE as of now:
Please check out the full RE Calendar for the Year here.
Each month:
We will have one Sunday where the faith formation program is Multigenerational Worship. This means children are invited to stay in the Sanctuary and participate in worship. A coloring station and games will be available in the parlor. The nursery will still be open for children 0-5 to play and hang out. Additional programming will not be offered to encourage participation in worship. We are doing this to be intentionally welcoming to children in worship and to include them when we gather as a Whole Church. We want children to know and feel that worship is also for them and that they are whole, valued, members of the community.
One Sunday a month the faith formation program is All Ages Children's Chapel. This means all children will depart together after the Time For All Ages and join in one class together to reflect on the worship themes and do a lesson or game together. We are doing this so that the children have a chance to connect across their ages and build a larger community together -- older kids having a chance to model for younger kids, and younger kids having a chance to get to know and learn from older kids.
Two Sundays a month, children will be invited to take part in Age-based Religious Education Classes. These classes also happen during worship, departing after the Time For All Ages. These classes are taught by fabulous volunteer members of the community and assisted by our teen helpers. More info is below.
Age-Based Classes:
Nursery care and free play will always be available for children 0 - 5 years old at both services. Currently we do not have a pre-k/K class scheduled due to volunteer capacity. I would love for this to change and am working on recruiting teachers for this class (maybe it's you? maybe it's someone you know? :) Contact Martha!) For now, we invite our littles to play together with our childcare providers.
Elementary School Class (Grades 1 - 3): This class will be doing a UU values curriculum this year! We will use games, crafts, art projects, stories, and other activities to help our young learners explore our values together.
Upper Elementary School Class (Grades 4 - 6): This class will be doing our Building Bridges program in which they learn about the religious and spiritual traditions of our neighbors and have a chance to reflect on their own values.
Junior High Youth Group (Grades 7 - 8): This group will be completing the last few lessons of the Building Bridges program (please note this group only meets during the 11am service on class Sundays) and then will be doing some pre-youth group bonding and identity exploration.
Our Whole Lives (Grades 7 - 8): our OWL Sexuality Education Program will launch in the Spring for youth in the 7th and 8th Grades. If you are interested in your child participating, please indicate so on the RE form and more info will come out about this in the coming weeks. The OWL class will run January 2025 to June 2025, Sunday evenings from 4:30 - 6:30pm.
Whoo-hoo! Here we go!
Religious Education is an amazing community-wide project that is an expression of how we love one another. I feel so grateful to get to put this together with your support and input and with the wisdom and guidance of our RE Committee.
Please do let me know if you any questions about any parts of this plan or schedule.
In faith,
Martha (mdneuman@uubelmont.org)
