UU Thinking Sticks

A thrift-store game of Jenga blocks, a permanent marker, and a list of juicy concepts are all you need to make a set of open-ended word toys that promote creative and critical thinking skills, interpersonal connection, and interfaith competency in a UU context.

Sandra Dodd, the homeschooling parent who helped bring unschooling out from obscurity in the 1990s and through present day, shared a fun game on her site called "Thinking Sticks." The idea is to have a set of Popsicle sticks with inviting concepts on them: Japan, shoes, pre-history, medicine, morality, rodeo, holidays, journalism, etc. Grab two sticks and try to connect the ideas and then share what you come up with. That's it. Very simple, but very open, which allows for twists and turns into interesting conversations, sharings, and realizations. She conceived of the game as a way to help people release their ideas about life being separated out into finite subjects (math, science, history, English), since that kind of thinking holds people back in unschooling.

For UU's, this could make a great get-to-know-you game, or a warm-up activity for a discussion, or a pastime for youth groups on a bus or at a lock-in. Reason is one of our sources of wisdom, and lifelong learning is an abiding characteristic of our adherents. Also, as our faith--and our future--becomes more interfaith, more integrated, and more interconnected, the ability to link ideas becomes a critical skill. (This is not my idea alone; UU religious educator Kathryn Baptista used Thinking Sticks in a sermon in the early 2000's; the text of her sermon is here.)

In the Spirit Play classroom, teachers could get together and make a list of words that were derived from the stories they intended to tell for the year. Death, neighbors, seed, grief, home, and mother might be words from "Mustard Seed Medicine." Sharing, wolves, fear, population, understanding, compromise, instinct, and enough might be words from "Who Speaks for Wolf." It would be fun for the teachers to come up with such a list at the beginning of the year, and makes a pretty sturdy classroom choice for very little money. (Jenga set was $2 at the thrift store, and I had the multicolored Sharpie markers, but you could do it with a black one just as well.)

If you wanted to make a set of more general spirituality-themed Thinking Sticks, there is a list here that might help you get started.