A Stepping-Stone Year
A Program for Eight to Ten Year OldsBy Margaret K. Gooding
- Theme and Description
- This program is based on the premise that religion helps people find answers to important life questions and that a religious community can help people in their search for answers. Units include Beginning Myths, Stories Science Tells Us, The Wonder of Birth, Adventures of Our People (American, Canadian, and English UUs), Wonderings About Death, and Making Decisions.
- Goals for Participants
- To form ideas about how the world began after examining various myths and theories;
To stimulate thinking and decision-making through discovery of the questions, story, lore, and vision of Unitarian Universalists: past and present;
To take beginning steps in formulating their religious concepts and identities;
To become part of a religious community, to make friends, to learn, and to have fun.
- Age Range
- 8-12
- Size of Group
- 6-15
- Space Requirements
- An average-sized room, suitable for discussion, art projects, and games. Access to a kitchen.
- Number and Length of Sessions
- 35 sessions
Length: 1 to 1-1/2 hours - Leader Training
- The introduction contains helpful information about teaching, characteristics of the age group, and reading resources. Suggestions of teaching processes are included in each session.
- Leader Preparation
- Approximately 2 hours per session
- Strengths
- Provides a complete, year-long program, including background reading for leaders, craft how-to's, good discussion questions, and values activities.
Makes excellent use of established programs and resources, such as Beginnings and From Long Ago and Many Lands.
Offers good suggestions for communication with parents.
Includes a simple closing activity in each session. - Limitations
- May require leaders to add more variety to the program with easy-to-do, creative art activities.
Lacks correlations and comparisons within and between the myths, as well as scientific explanations of the beginning of life. - Adaptability
- If leaders adapt ideas and concepts to specific levels of understanding, the program is appropriate for a wide age range in small religious education programs.
- Unitarian Universalist Values
- References specific values that have influenced the Unitarian Universalists. Implicitly Unitarian Universalist in the approach to creation, birth, death, and the meaning of life: inviting the children's questions and discoveries as they formulate their own values.
Reviewed on June 30, 2004
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