Who Speaks for Wolf?

Here's the layout for a new story that could be categorized as a 6th Source Story (earth-centered traditions) or a 7th Principle Story (respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part). I don't know that it would be right to classify it as a 3rd Source Story (world religions) because I am having trouble finding out if it is authentic to any one Native American tribe or region. This brought up a new issue for me, and that was looking at the Spirit Play story selection and presentation through an anti-racist, anti-oppression, and multicultural lens. That's new for me, so I don't have any fully formed ideas to share yet, just a notion that that habit would be helpful.

That said, here's the layout. The text of this story appears on the training CD

I have been messing around with the scroll saw a bit, and made this wolf figure to use instead of the suggested, though that one is quite nice and inexpensive. I like how my figure turned out a lot, but the scale is wrong with the people across the river (which come from the Powhotan people TOOB). That bothers me some. It seems as if it could be a distraction, and would inhibit acting out the story in a way that illustrates a more authentic interaction between humans and animals. (The resin toy suggested in the story is too big, too, so I think the whole layout would have to be reimagined to solve this problem.)

Also, one change I made from the suggested layout was to make the wolf's land look more lush and large than the people's. I think that helps drive home the point that the people coveted the wolf's territory, and that animals truly do need bigger and wider spaces than people do to live out their lives in a natural way.

I'll be interested to see how the children play with this set. It will be a good opportunity for me to focus on a practice that I was recently reminded of, and that is to carefully observe and record the children in their learning work and to make any needed changes to draw out the meaning and level of engagement.

Edited to add: The special work choice that we used for this story is here.

Mustard Seed Medicine layout

Whew! Six months later, I've finally finished up the Mustard Seed Medicine story. First, here it is:

Particulars:

The story is made from wood and felt. The figures are cut from 3/4 inch pine board, and the Buddha's house is cut from a 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch piece of oak. Painted with water colors, wood-burned features, and Mod Podge sealer.

The houses are just two felt rectangles with the top one having a door-shaped rectangle cut out, and then the two layers stitched all around. (They likely could have been glued for a no-sew option, but I like the look of sewing.) I worked with the house design a lot, but it seemed as if the more clever and engaging I tried to get with the house designs, the more distracting they were from the characters and the flow of the story. Simple and repetitive was definitely the way to go. Still, something nice about these houses is that you can tuck the figures into them, so in that house in the upper left, you can keep the green neighbor in the house until the mother comes to ask for the mustard seed, and then have the neighbor come out the door to talk.

This story is written up beautifully on the Spirit Play training CD, and this layout works well with that text.

Tools and Supplies:

This presentation was pretty tools-intensive. I used a scroll saw, a Dremel tool, a sewing machine, sandpaper and a big set of watercolor paints. Supplies, however, were cheap. The full pine board was $9 for, I think, 10" by 8'? The 3/4" oak piece was 7' long and was about $7. I used probably 20% of both of the quantities of wood, so let's call that $3. The felt was $5/yard, and the quantities I needed to buy in order to get the big white shape meant 1 1/2 yards total of fabric. I used my handy-dandy 40% off coupon from JoAnn's, so that was maybe $3.50.

If you didn't have tools available to you, you could glue or hand-stitch the houses, use wooden peg people (simply painted in muted colors would be nice), and use long, thin felt pieces for Buddha's open-sided house. That would keep the story still under $10.

Stone Soup Layout

I want to talk a little bit about the process of putting together a story, as this one came together in what has become a fairly typical way.

But there was one big anomaly with this, and that was the the inspiration for it came from a minister. I have never in this position worked with a minister before, but there is a ministerial candidate in town and we've been collaborating a bit on the Time for All Ages for this Sunday, and it parlays nicely into the Stone Soup story.

So, step one was getting a bird's eye view on the Sunday offerings in worship and RE, collaborating with those who are co-creating worship to understand how the various parts were intended to fit together.

Then, step two was choosing a Spirit Play story to integrate into that. It has helped immensely to take the time this year to get to know the stories, and to seek out new stories with an eye toward Spirit Play development.

Step three was to spend a little time with the story, really getting a feel for the themes and the wonderings and what kinds of materials would make the story really sing to the children.

So, with a better understanding of what I wanted to happen with the telling of the story, I set to work making, finding, and putting together materials. That was step four.

I have a ready store of the recycled-plastic-bottle felt that you can get at the craft store for about $5 a yard (sometimes less if it's on sale). I cut out a 36" indigo circle to reinforce that this is an indigo promise story, "Insist on fair and equal treatment for all." (Working the promises into the culture of the classroom hasn't been as strong as it might have been this year, so when it doesn't detract from the overall presentation, I've been trying to color-code the underlay to the promise.) And I made the felt grass.


I should add that this layout draws heavily from the one pictured in the "Stone Soup" story on the Spirit Play training CD, with only a few small changes.

I also have a ready store of peg people, so I knew I wanted to use them for the villagers. I wanted the travelers to look distinct, and I borrowed a couple of doll house people for them. This also allowed me to vary the gender of the travelers, since they are almost always two or three men int the stories.

Between the 36" circle and the people, I had a rough scale set, so I created from a small piece of 1/2" poplar wood I had here at home a set of wooden houses that would more or less fit with the villagers. The color palette was chosen to jibe with the mostly earthy and bright colors of the food that would be added to the pot--the red of a red pepper, the green of a head of cabbage, the yellow of corn, the red of a ripe tomato, etc.

I already had a set of wooden food to use for this Sunday's telling, but I found a set of fairly affordable Melissa and Doug wooden vegetables that I plan on buying for the program to live in this story basket.

My boys helped me find stones they liked for the soup pot.

And the soup pot itself isn't quite as quaint as the small iron skillet of my own that I was going to use, but it fit the bill, being the right size, without a handle, and with a lid. I had envisioned perhaps finding an iron or enameled one at the thrift store, but alas, not this time. Serendipitously, though, I found a large Ziploc bag at the thrift store full of fake bread. There is a part in the story about how the bread appears at the end of the soup's cooking, and is shared along with the rest of the meal. So, a few loaves will be with this story, and a few will go into the Bread Communion story basket.

That's another thing nice about really getting familiar with the stories you have or want to tell--you can have a running mental list of supplies to be on the lookout for at thrift stores and garage sales. I do this because I love it, but I'd love even more to share this delightful task with a steady volunteer who can double our chance of finding cool supplies and cut in half the time any one person spends doing it! Also, could you imagine what a rich partnership that would be for two people, carrying around all these stories for a year, discussing how to build them and why, and actively completing them so they could be shared?

Step 5 was putting all the materials together and practicing the story with them, doing rewrites and adaptations as you do. When I'm pretty confident that I am familiar enough to tell the story with confidence and a few glances at the paper to stay on track, and that I know which pieces to pick up when and where to put them on the underlay, I fold it up and wait for the delivery day. (I also have a ready story of thrift-store baskets, all purchased for $3 or less, and usually a little smaller than the size of a lunchroom tray.)

Step 6 is making a label for the basket, the symbol label on one side, the name of the story on the other.

And if this was going to be a classroom story, step 7 would be to find a place for it on the shelves and possibly create a new work choice to accompany it.

"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.

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.

Many Ways to Pray story

This lesson was lovely to build. You are tasked to find images that are such fun to look for--a picture of Ghandi, Jesus, and the Dalai Lama, children praying, Muslims praying, American Indians praying, labyrinth walkers, lotus sitters, etc. A simple white background frames these images, and a simple text about what a prayer was, is, and can be leads you through them.

A friend told me that plastic lamination takes 500 years to break down. So, I have resolved to quit using it. No small feat in children's education settings! But we got the pictures printed at the office supply store onto heavy-duty cardstock, then recycled a set of old holiday cards to provide backing and further sturdiness. A few tidy slices of the paper cutter, and the cards look and feel great.

The first story

We're building Spirit Play baskets two ways this summer: holding work parties to do some of the work together, and letting people choose stories to build in their own way with their own materials.

I chose the Blue Promise story of the Seven Blind Mice to create along with my mom, who's an avid, talented, and well-stocked sewer. 

We used this pattern for the toy mice, adding stand-up ears instead of embroidered ones. And the puzzle elephant is from RJA Woodworking, $13.50. The cards are freehand drawings on red cardstock. And the basket was previously a fruit basket owned by my sister.

The elephant story is about truth in its many guises, considering others' perspectives, and waiting for the whole picture to emerge in a seemingly complex--and maybe a unsettling--situation. All important concepts in church life!

The benefit of doing the whole story ourselves, between my mom and I, was that we had all the materials at the same place at the same time to be able to make adjustments. And focusing on building this particular basket was also a few days' focus on the story itself, which is about truth and perception, and about multiple perspectives all having value, but getting closest to reality when they're put together.