November 18, 2018 ~ Gratitude and Thanksgiving

Above: We love when families participate in worship.  If your family would like to light the chalice sometime soon, please let me (Liza) know, or email me at ucm.dre@gmail.com and we'll set it up!

Above: We have a new Peace Place in our Children's Chapel, which came out of our October theme of learning about 'Sanctuary' and needing a quiet, safe place just to be.  Kids OR adults welcome anytime!  

Guest: I invited Gail Falk to get the children's input for the Covenant of Right Relations that is being co-created by the congregation this year.  We acted out a skit of a big argument happening at the Snack Table over donuts, and they came up with many good ideas for what could be in the covenant to help people navigate big disagreements.  

Theme: We focused on gratitude and Thanksgiving.  

9am One Room and 11am One Room (1st grade and up): We played "A West Wind Blows" with kids taking turns being in the middle and naming things they were thankful for.  They had fun gratitudes including: siblings, snow, cookies, pillows, animals, buildings, mountains, many more ... and (my favorite) this church!  We discussed:

• the history of Thanksgiving and the actual 3 day harvest celebration between the Wampanoag tribe and the settlers of Plymouth Plantation 
• how it is a hard holiday for many Native Americans because a moment of good will by the settlers is lifted up, and much of the hard history of how the European settlers treated the Native Americans very badly is left out of the American memory. Because one of our 7 UU principles is the search for truth, it's important to know the true history. 
• the Honor Native Land movement and put up a poster from Abenaki Chief Don Stevens in our Children's Chapel.  

Activity: Children decorated small table tents as an option to have at their Thanksgiving table, to honor the Native land wherever they are that day. We talked about some people traveling and needing to do some research about local tribes (Tennessee, New Jersey).  

Want to continue the conversation at home?  Ask:

What were your ideas about working through the donut argument?

What were you grateful for when you were in the center of the game?

What's the name of the Native American tribe in this Vermont? (Western Abenaki) 

If you are traveling: What's the name of the Native American tribe where we are going to be for this weekend?  Here's a beautiful map of Native American Nations, that you can zoom in on to find specific tribes. It's amazing to see just how many different groups are on the map!      

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11am PreK and K made a poster of their brainstorm of gratitudes (see picture below).  Play dough is on there because next they used the FRESH homemade play dough that their group leader, Amy Donald made. There's nothing in the world like fresh homemade play dough! They sculpted things they were grateful for.  Toward the end while they worked the play dough they heard some of the book Ox Cart Man, connecting with our monthly theme of Memory.  It was nice to have several new kids, to make a group of 7 today!   

Ask your preschooler / kindergartener: 

-What did you think might help the people in the skit that were arguing over donuts at the snack table?

-What did you make with the play dough?  

-Could you help us make a thankful brainstorm for the whole family to do on Thanksgiving?