"Granddad's Prayers of the Earth"

My friend Jennifer is a 25-year veteran teacher. She is very good at connecting with students. She is very good at creating a culture of calm and respect in the classroom. And she is very good at "good enough." She's been doing what she's doing long enough to know that perfectionism is a straight and easy path to burnout, and burnout is one of the reasons good educators chose other careers.

Today, I double checked that a story that was supposed to have been built this summer was, in fact, intact.

It was mostly built, but not completely.

And not only was it not complete, but the overall visual effect of what was there left me a little tepid.

It is a very compelling aspect of Spirit Play that the materials are enticing, enchanting, well-made, durable, and attractive. These types of materials are more likely to invite engagement with the stories, giving children a real chance to interact with the content and make meaning. And with only one short hour a month spent in the church classroom, the more a child wants to play with the stories, the better chance they will have a positive impact in his or her life.

The story was made to spec, and very much resembles the suggested samples for this particular story, but just lacked that "something special."

What to do? 

This time, nothing.

I made the few pieces that were needed to complete the story and made a note to myself to think more about story design and creation later. Hours, circumstance, and my good friend's wisdom led me to call that Good Enough for today.  

Francis David -- from scratch!

The folks at the UU church in Annapolis, Maryland had a swell idea to adapt the Flat Stanley project, so adored by elementary school classes for the past 40 years, with a decidedly UU slant; they made a "Flat Francis," as in Francis David, the Hungarian priest-turned-Unitarian who swept a trinitarian/anti-trinitarian debate in Transylvania in the mid 1500s and convinced King John Sigismund to change his own religion and to use the principle of religious tolerance to unite his ethnically diverse, war-torn kingdom.

It's quite a story. I have wanted to tell it to the children in the program since first hearing it at the Spirit Play training we held here in Fayetteville in May, but had not yet found the right circumstance. Well, Flat Francis arrived over the holiday break, fresh from Ohio!, and I got for Christmas the small scroll saw that I had asked for to try my hand at woodworking.

Francis David's time has come.

Because I am new to woodworking, the simple but elegant design that Ralph Roberts and the folks at Worship Woodworks came up with served as my inspiration for my very first woodworking project.

It was such fun to make. And since I used scrap wood and a donated basket, the only cost to the program was the peg people and the felt, totaling $5. I share it with the children during Children's Chapel on Sunday. I am So Excited.

Big Bang/Beginning of the Universe

We had a snow day today, and with everything closed and the streets quiet, my mind turned to the long view of finishing out the year in the Spirit Play classroom.

A small unit that we'll be doing in late winter is creation, working within the "Wonder and Awe" Source of Unitarian Universalism, and moving from the scientific explanations of the start of everything to creation stories from various cultures. So today, I spent a little time using leftover materials and made the items for the "Big Bang/Beginning of the Universe" story.

Something I like a lot about this story is that there is a built in way for the children to co-create the story with the storyteller; at a certain point, the children crumple up gold tissue paper to demonstrate the compression of elements into stars. They then add the stars to the underlay as the story turns to the formation of galaxies. I have found myself soliciting participation in a couple of stories thus far, and have very much liked the effect it had on individuals and the energy of the group.

Chalica, Worship is the Center

Today is the first day of Chalica. It has never been celebrated at this congregation before, so a very dedicated and talented lay leader and I put it together from scratch. What fun! We selected "Worship is the Center" as the Spirit Play story to show the principles off at their very best--along with the chalice, sources, and rituals of UUism.

Here is the finished layout of that story, taken earlier in the day after I'd practiced it a few times:

The laundry basket is there for scale; this story, intended for sharing in a multigenerational worship setting, is big! Our gathered group of 30 was small enough that we could all still more or less circle around, but I'm curious how this would be best done in a group of 50 or more.

On the back of the symbols, I made little cheats for myself, writing the source that each symbol corresponded to, and a phrase or two about what that source offered to UUism. This was very helpful.

The cape--which I must admit I first thought of as a little cheesy--was a huge hit! People loved it. The gold circle above has a slit up to the center, and it's double-sided with the other side being black fabric with little silver stars on it. You begin the story wearing the cape with the "universe" side out, then you transform it to the underlay, then back into your cape at the end. I flubbed the ending of the story a little bit, going out with a little puff instead of the Big Bang that was written. But at 10 minutes of memorized text, this one pretty well tried me! 

It was the second time we used Spirit Play with the whole group, and universally, people adored it. They commented on the pace, the holiness, the way everyone around them was holding their breath anticipating the next part of the story. I was shocked. And happy. This RE year began with a handful of pressing and unanticipated needs, and so we were not able to launch Spirit Play the way we wanted to. But this felt like a very special introduction, and 30 people got to experience it. 

"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.