Welcome!
The following are updates for our Religious Education program for the 2011-2012 program year beginning on September 11, 2011.
Theme: Religious Education as a Part of our Lives
Mission: The Bismarck-Mandan Unitarian Universalist Fellowship seeks to provide a path for spiritual inquiry for
people of all ages.
The Religious Education (RE) Committee has embarked on a lifespan spiritual development approach which will incorporate preschool, school age, teens and adults.
This will be an exiting year for your child in their faith development. The RE Committee has been working on building a system that can have lasting results for your child and for their adult parents/mentors. One of the more exciting ideas is the discussion of how to create a more education focused community including ways to involve more adults in the children’s instruction and ways to involve the children more consistently in the service.
Sunday morning classes include the nursery, preschool, school aged and older school age children. Our junior high and teens will be meeting at atlernate times. Their schedule will be announced as special events are planned. Leadership for the teens will be by Rick Makelky.
The Nursery (ages 0-2 years) will be led by Beth Nodland on Sunday mornings. Our UU Teens will be helping in the Nursery as needed. The UUA developed program, Spirit Play will be shared in the Nursery with our children two and under.
The Preschool Classroom (age 3-children not yet in Kindergarten) will be led by Carol Jean Larsen and Diane Chielens. The UUA developed curriculum, Chalice Children will be used with this age group. Chalice Children is designed to help preschoolers learn about their church and congregation. The curriculum is based on the belief that preschool children gain a sense of belonging to their religious community and the Unitarian Universalist faith when they have concrete experiences with its people and places. This program is part of the three-year Unitarian Universalist preschool curricula series that includes Celebrating Me and My World, and We Are Many, We Are One.
The Early Elementary Classroom ( K-2nd grade) will be led by UU Friend, Liz Anderson and Later Elementary Classroom (3rd-6th grade) will be led by Tim Hathaway and UU Friend, Anessa Pfeifer. These classrooms will employ a Team Teaching approach in order to provide the children with a variety of talented members of the church community.
Both of these classrooms will be using the UUA developed curriculum, Tapestry of Faith. Tapestry of Faith is a new series of programs and resources for all ages that nurture Unitarian Universalist identity, spiritual growth, a transforming faith, and vital communities of justice and love. These resources are being developed out of a broad series of conversations that articulated a future direction for Unitarian Universalist religious growth and learning and denomination-wide focus groups which helped shape a program that would offer a variety of resources—downloadable, printed, viewable, interactive, and more—a religious growth and learning program for the twenty-first century.
Our Adult Religious Education is coordinated by Carol Jean Larsen and involves different weekday evening or Saturday morning programs. With the help of our hospitality folks, we will also plan circle suppers and include relevant discussion themes to make the experience more spiritually meaningful.
For questions about any of our Religious Education programs, please call the church office: 701.223.6788.
