REC-Room Activities: Social Action

			Activities: Social Action

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St. Patrick's Day Caroling

Last December our RE committee decided that the annual "Christmas Caroling" visit to a nearby nursing home was just too much and that we would try to vist at another time - well this Sunday was that time! I decided to call it a "Ceili" - a Celtic word used to describe a neighborhood dancing and singing party - "A St. Patrick's Day Caroling Party." When we called the Nursing home to make arrangements, the staff said they would love to have us come by - this is not a busy time of the year for them.

This is what we did:

1. wrote up - (copied from an internet source,) the story of St. Patrick - read by two girls.

2. Made up Irish Song booklets with the words to several popular "Irish Songs" - we used these ourselves and gave them to members of our audience for our "sing-along".

3. We found some short and silly Irish jokes and stories -( it was tricky to find things that were not offensive in some way.) The children read and told these.

4. We put ribbons with shamrocks which had Irish proverbs on them around the necks of little stuffed bears and other toys which we gave out as favors.

Our experience was most rewarding. Our audience sang along - they already really knew the words and tunes. They seemed to enjoy our jokes and efforts to provide diversion. The children were very well behaved and really enjoyed singing and giving away the presents. Our staff/hosts seemed genuinely grateful. The entire operation lasted just about 30 minutes and with kids and adults we numbered about 25. I think we will do this sort of thing again- we need to work on getting the children to slow down and speak up, but visiting with these folks and providing them the opportunity to sing along with old songs they like and to all laugh at dumb old jokes felt pretty good this morning.

Afterwards we went back to the church to share a St. Patty's brunch and then to do our "seasonal walk" celebrating the vernal eqinox in a nearby park complete with snow and pussywillows!

- Lyn Cameron DRE Channing Church, Rockland, MA

Fishbowl Technique - conflict resolution

From: life.of.riley@sfnet.com

Some RE programs are affected by tension between those who find "God" scary and those who find "God" a source of inspiration. Has anyone ever held a forum on a congregational scale to find common ground between the two?

There's a style of workshop called "fishbowl", sometimes practiced at YRUU and UUYAN conferences, which can work well with polarized groups and might be worth trying on the "God" issue. The two groups meet separately (briefly); each comes up with questions for the other.

Then one group meets in a circle and discusses the questions raised by the other group, for a predetermined duration while, the other group sits outside the circle and listens *silently* - so that the first group can discuss the questions as if they were alone.

The two groups switch places. If done right, this can bring out perspectives in an honest and non-confrontational way.

We're interested in directing attention outside of ourselves, so our "offering" is for UNICEF and the local food bank. On the occasion of birthdays, people deposit coins for the number of years they are turning into a large UNICEF box. Just before Halloween, each child who wants one is given a smaller box to trick-or-treat with, and all of that money is added to what's been collected since the previous Halloween. It amounts to quite a bit. Some people donate pennies, some larger amounts. Children sometimes put money in the box on behalf of someone else they care about; adults also participate in the ritual. Some children &/or adults deposit money to acknowledge other occasions too, or "just because". After I've sent the money in to UNICEF, I let the children know how much they collected (how many pennies, how many nickels, etc.), and use that as an illustration of how every little bit truly adds up.

Birthdays are also an opportunity for families to make donations of books to the RE program (an idea borrowed from Cindy Leitner when she was DRE at West Hills UU Fellowship). Many of our best books have inscriptions at the front, commemorating a child who is X years old, with the date -- sort of a piece of our congregation's history, which is an added bonus.

Millie Rochester, DRE, UU Congregation of Salem

Human Rights for Children

I worked with a program that was developed with funding from Amnesty International around the International Rights of the Child. It was designed for school teachers to use, but can easily be adapted. It's called Human Rights for Children: A curriculum for Teaching Human Rights to Children Ages 3-12. Because it's designed for use within the context of public schools, all the material is activities that can fit into various school topics (social science, geography, math, language arts, etc. etc.). The activities are also divided by age groups It was very light on all the very difficult material, but gives space to include it within the context of human rights. There are also good book lists for each of the ten rights. We used it for our 10 week summer session for grades 3-6.

Liz Jones, San Diego

We do not pesently have a submission form specifically to submit social action activities, but if you have one you'd like to add, please send it to us via email.

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