Upcoming In Children and Youth Religious Education (RE)
Nursery care for children ages 0-3 is available during services on Sunday mornings, or caregivers are of course welcome to keep their children with them during the service. Children over the age of three are invited to attend the first part of the service with the adults. After the story portion of the service, these children have the option to go to children’s programming. Youth groups for pre-teens and teens in junior and senior high school take place on designated Sunday evenings.
- Friday, March 1: Group for Caregivers of LGBTQI+ Young People
- Sunday, March 3: Regular Sunday morning programs; Junior High Youth Group meets Sunday evening
- Sunday, March 10: Regular Sunday morning programs (see additional invitation regarding Girl Scout Sunday); Senior High Youth Group meets Sunday evening
- Sunday, March 17: Regular Sunday morning programs
- Sunday, March 24: Regular Sunday morning programs; Senior High Youth Group meets Sunday evening
- Sunday, March 31: Easter Sunday – kids and teens stay in the service; a non-traditional Easter egg hunt will follow the service
For Caregivers of Young Kids
Are you parenting an infant, toddler, or child of preschool or early elementary school age? Our Director of Religious Education for Children and Youth, Rev. Sierra-Marie Gerfao, is forming a Conscious Parenting Group for caregivers of young children. If you are interested, please email her at dre@uudanbury.org.
Girl Scout Sunday
Girl Scout Sunday is March 10th. Have a Girl Scout who would be interested in helping out in the service on Sunday? Please contact Sierra-Marie at dre@uudanbury.org.
Volunteering This Summer or Next Year With Our Children and Youth Ministries
We may be offering a summer program, either weekly or (if there is not enough interest among families for a weekly program) a one to two week summer camp. As always, we also will be offering a full slate of programs during the 2024-2025 school year. We will need volunteers if any of this is going to happen.
I want to re-share with you something that I wrote in the Comment back in 2022. I was writing about the idea that “the method is the message.” Here is what I wrote:
I want you to know that it makes a difference if you volunteer. It communicates to the kids – among many other helpful things – that we are a community on whom they can rely as they explore what they believe, develop a relationship with this congregation and Unitarian Universalism, and try living out their values in a complicated world. It also communicates to parents and guardians that this is a community on whom they can rely, that they are not alone in learning alongside of and guiding future generations. The method is the message.
While working in this congregation over the last couple years, I have often heard adult congregants say that they wouldn’t be a good fit to volunteer with children. “I wouldn’t even know what to say to kids these days!” “They don’t want me. I’m too old and can’t relate to kids like young people can.” And so on. This method has a message, and I am not sure it is the message you want to communicate to children and their families. I imagine you don’t want to communicate with your distance from the next generations that they are so different from you that common ground can’t be found; that there are no resources from the past that can help them; and that they and their parents and guardians are on their own in this uncertain era. . .
[Soon] I may ask you if you would be willing to volunteer. This question is an invitation to move through discomfort to help build an intergenerational community where the generations can learn from one another. I hope that is a method and a message in which you will consider investing.
This is as worthwhile an invitation as it was a couple of years ago. If you are thinking you might be interested in volunteering either this summer or in the next school year – in a small or in a large way – I invite you to contact me at dre@uudanbury.org so we can find the right opportunity for your skills, hopes, and energy.
Warmly,
Sierra-Marie