"The Weight of a Snowflake"

Children's Chapel for December is about peace and the power of one. The story I built for it was "The Weight of a Snowflake," which seems to be of ambiguous origin on the Internets. I took the short script, modified a few small details, and put it into a Spirit Play format.

It took me about half a week to make it from scratch, and I'd say about 9 hours (including planning the rest of the Children's Chapel around it). Nine hours of work for 45 minutes of time with the children, plus maybe another session here or there that uses the same materials in a different way made me second guess my time management skills. Not loving these stats, I made a really robust take-home sheet for families this week to bring the ideas home. And I'm referring them to the YouTube version of the story to listen to and watch together as a bedtime story.

I know in my bones that full-week faith is how children are going to move from doing UU to feeling UU, and that latter is what is going to help them to access--and add to--the wisdom, depth, and strength that UU has to offer. I'm still working on getting there.

A recording of the story I found on YouTube:

And the first sketch:

Building the pieces:

Then the story, in three stages:

And here's the whole thing packed up in its basket. I remembered to include in the script a sentence for each item as I'm putting it away, too, which is a nice chance to provide a little summary or add a bit of new information. 

Using this for Children's Chapel, I also presentied each child was a little end-of-year gift, a crochet wool snowflake (seen in the first image, and set in a little origami paper box). As I handed it to them, I had a little message for each one about having a unique, strong voice, and using it to add weight to the truths that are important. And for feast, we ate popcorn drizzled with white chocolate. Popcorn, in Spanish, is palomitas, which translates literally to "tiny doves."

Finally, here was the little altar setting for the children's service, with the story off to the right:

(The drums were our musical accompaniment for "Peace, Salaam, Shalom," which was our hymn.)

There were only a handful of kids there, but it was so lovely. One boy remarked how the tree reminded him of Ygrdasil, the Norse tree of life. Another asked me to tell her mom about the snowflake present so that she could be sure to remember it right. Afterward, when I was chatting informally with one boy's mother, he stood nearby and made a connection with what I was saying that began with, "It's just like in the story, about one voice." Their answers for the standard Spirit Play question, "I wonder where you are in this story?" were just beautiful--one child was the snow, for his favorite holiday of winter; another was the olive branch in the peace dove's mouth, where he thought the stories must come from; another was the trunk of the fir tree, strong and soft. 

It was such an honor to be there with them as they talked through their wonderings and knowings. Truly, it was one of those sessions that I think I would have spent twice as long on if I'd known how good it was going to be, so my resolution is to get smarter about time while keeping a very firm grasp on my priority of promoting incarnational spiritual growth.

Embroidery for Beginners

A quick share:

A small, child-friendly beginning embroidery kit that can be held in the lap during church service. Large, plastic tapestry needle. Embroidery floss wound neatly on cardboard spools. Round-tipped scissors. Big-holed burlap. Wee hoop. Basket just the size to sit in a child's lap. Two or three such kits (or more, for a bigger church) could be stacked together in the foyer or just outside the sanctuary in a specially designated area for kids to get and put back themselves.

Update:

Adults and children alike have fully embraced this during-service activity, and have even worked collaboratively on a design over several Sundays! The adults seem tickled that they are "allowed" to do this, too. A friend of mine, Joy, reminded me that there is good brain science that backs up the theory that having something creative and repetitive to do with one's hands helps some to focus. This can help some church leaders to be convinced of the fitness of this offering for our Sunday services.

Bread Communion story

Bread Communion is at the end of November, so we introduced the ritual in this month's first-Sunday Children's Chapel. The Spirit Play training CD that you get when you complete a training has a combination Church Corner/Bread Communion/Guests at Your Table story (Section 3, "Liturgical Lesson Bread Communion") that we modified for the occasion.

I used a fair amount of verbiage exactly as Beverly Leute Bruce wrote it, so I don't feel as if I can share our version of the story here. But I can share the picture!

The preparation for this story was particularly fun for me! I love watercolor on wood, and I love salt dough sculpture. As the materials-in-progress sat on my counter this past week, everyone who came over wanted to pick something up and look at it. I think of intrigue as one of the most powerful catalysts for learning, so this pleased me greatly. And with the whole thing coming it at under $5, it showed that the recommended high-quality materials for Spirit Play stories don't always--or even often!--have to mean high-dollar.

There's an option in the story, which we included, where you pass the smaller basket containing the people, and each child adds one him or herself around the central basket of bread. That was good. I want to look for more opportunities to unfold stories as a group.

For part of this story, too, you introduce the Guests at Your Table boxes and pass around a bowl of pennies for the kids to drop into the box, asking them to envision spreading help, food, and love as they do. They really got into this part! I don't remember how we introduced the boxes last year, but I feel great about this Spirit Play story as a kick-off, and think we'll be using it annually for the foreseeable future.

Serendipitously, I found these beautiful cut-and-fold paper trees, called "Thankful Trees," to accompany the boxes at our family dinner tables.  We had some on our Children's Chapel altar, too, and sent the cardstock print-outs home for each child to cut, fold, and display.