Children’s Religious Education (RE)

Register for 2018-2019 Religious Education here!

The above link will take you to a form where you will provide registration information for your child. Don’t forget to click the blue Submit button at the bottom when done.

For up to the minute news on activities and items of interest to parents of our RE children, visit our Director of Religious Education’s blog!

Each week, the children in our community join the congregation for the beginning of our Sunday service. After collecting the food donations, the youth are “sung out” by the congregation to their Religious Education classes.

CRE Principles, Mission, Vision

CRE Teachers, Committee, Staff

CRE Curriculum

Principles, Mission, Vision

Our Principles

We believe that each and every person is important.
We believe that all people should be treated fairly.
We believe that all our churches are places where all people are accepted, and where we keep learning together.
We believe that each person must be free to search for what is true and right in life.
We believe that everyone should have a voice about the things that concern them.
We believe in working for a peaceful, fair and free world.
We believe in caring for our planet Earth.

Our Mission

Through our Children’s Religious Education programming, we encourage our youth to ask questions and explore. We seek to instill in them confidence as they set out on their unique spiritual journeys. We hope to establish a lifelong dedication in our youth to the Unitarian Universalist community at large.

Our Vision

Our Children’s Religious Education Program provides weekly, age-appropriate classes covering introductions to different religions, UU history, UU identity, environmental and global issues, and social justice issues. We welcome new members to our youth program in a way that encourages them to make connections and want to return. We offer opportunities for the youth in the program to make a positive impact on our local and global community, and initiate opportunities for them to connect with other UU youth in our district.

Teachers, Committee, Staff

Our Teachers

Our teachers are dedicated volunteers from the congregation who enjoy sharing with and learning from our community’s youth. Please contact the Director of Religious Education if you are interested in participating in this unique volunteering opportunity.

Children’s Religious Education Committee

The Children’s RE Committee meets with the DRE on the first Sunday of each month. The Committee consists of teachers, parents and congregation members who come together to support and assist with the RE program, provide suggestions, and address concerns.

Director of Religious Education

Our CRE program is staffed by a credentialed Director.
If you have any questions regarding the UUCSJS Children’s Religious Education Program or would like to register your child for our Children’s RE classes, please contact the Director of Religious Education, Jessica Dunn Safonof, at 609.965.9400 or by email at uucsjsdre@gmail.com.

Our Curriculum for 2018-2019

Also available in a downloadable PDF format.

Spirit Play

Pre-K – 2nd Grades

SpiritPlay is a storytelling religious education program. During each class, the storyteller relates a story while presenting visual cues (small objects or pictures) to the children as a way to help them remember the story.

Following each storytelling, the children are encouraged to interpret the story through art expression or revisit past stories. Included are legends from many different faith traditions, creative expressions of our Unitarian Universalist principles (introduced as “promises”), and tales of our UU ancestors.

Crossing Paths

Grades 3rd – 6th

In Crossing Paths our adolescents will explore various religious traditions with an emphasis on both the diverse forms and the diverse aims of the traditions. Instead of claiming that one religion is better than others or that all religions are really the same, this view understands religions as separate systems of belief dealing with distinct human challenges.

Each month the class will explore a different religious or faith tradition. Using mountaineering metaphors, the adolescents will “map the terrain” where they learn the basics of that month’s faith tradition. They will then collect the “tack” or gain an awareness of how that religion and Unitarian Universalism are similar and different. The class will then “summit the mountain” with travel to visit the faith community and/or interview a member of that faith. The final week is “Lake Sunday” where they will have the opportunity to reflect on and discuss the visit and all they have learned that month.

This approach is distinctly Unitarian Universalist. One sees it most clearly in the “Six Sources” we covenant to affirm and promote. From our beginning, Unitarian Universalists have looked to our sibling faith traditions as each having something unique to offer us and the world. Crossing Paths invites us to explore those unique gifts more deeply.

Heeding the Call/Principled Music

Grades 7-12

Heeding the Call is a series of workshops that offer a unique opportunity to engage youth in the critical work of developing skills as Unitarian Universalists committed to social justice. The workshops encourage youth to reflect on their own lives while also making connections to the lives lived by others. The program uses real-life examples of people facing the complexities of living lives of justice. The youth are encouraged to become Justice Makers by learning together, listening together, laughing together, working together, and heeding the call together.

In the spring, the youth will learn how music and social justice have always had close ties.

Principled Music uses popular music from the 1960s through the present as the basis for in-depth discussions of a wide variety of social justice topics. At each class, songs on a particular topic are listened to, along with a copy of the lyric sheet. After listening, the class will engage in discussion and activities, using the lyrics of the songs as a launching point. Topics will include racism, civil rights, bullying, homophobia, gender stereotyping, income inequality, and war.

Summer Session

Each summer our RE classes take a break and kids of all ages attending with their parents on Sundays enjoy an activity or craft led by a volunteer from the congregation. Some of the activities and crafts featured have included jewelry making, pottery, cooperative games, tie-dying, and making balloon animals.