Welcome Home

Welcome Home World Travelers! This week concluded the summer Passport program. The travelers were welcomed home with a day of reflection and gratitude for their tour guides. The toddlers in the nursery also celebrated homes. They read a book about different types of homes and then drew or built their own.

The World Travelers have been on quite a whirlwind adventure this summer. When we sat down to reflect today, we listed 12 amazing trips: Photo 101, Down Memory Lane, Camp Out and Canoe, Boston, Mountaineering, Japan, South Africa, Community Garden, Family Tree, Dancefest, Junior Ranger, and Movie Making. So many good memories! Each traveler had his/her personal favorite trip. We also reminisced about trips they took with their families this summer. As a group, we have spanned the country - from coast to coast and many places in between.

After traveling down memory lane (thanks Charley for teaching us how!), the travelers wrote about or drew pictures of their favorite trips in their journals. Then we wrote thank-you notes to all of the incredible tour guides who made their summer adventures possible. We are so lucky to have such interesting, talented, and intelligent members of our fellowship who are willing to donate their time and energy to us! At noon, the tour guides came into the Large RE room for an appreciation party. We had Dora the Explorer cupcakes, zucchini bread, and cookies. It was a wonderful end to an awesome summer.

The toddlers also had a great day. They read Who Lives Here, a book detailing all kinds of homes, from styes to hutches to houses. Then they drew or built their own home and played with the toy house. Good homey fun!

The summer program may have come to a close today, but the adventures continue this fall with amazing curricula. We start our next journey with new classes and curricula next week.

Parents' Night Out

Tonight was our first Parents' Night Out and it was a blast. I hope the parents had fun, too! We ate pizza, made grape jelly, watched Ratatouille, and played.

Here are some of my favorite moments of the night:

Lea, Rylee, Jocelyn, William, and Owen jumping on the couches. Then when asked to create a covenant for the night, suggesting "jumping on the couches" not be allowed. :)

Ronan and Nick making treasure maps for hidden "treasures" in the fellowship. The treasures were never found, so you still have a chance to find them!

Larry explaining the conquest of the Northwest to Maeve, Clara, and Helen.

Jocelyn and Lea setting up an incredible tea party and taking care of their "babies."

Light saber baseball with Burke's cool light saber.

Indigo taking Owen for a ride in the block wagon.

Rylee running up and down the halls for the pure joy of it.

William starting a trend of eating a plain cake cone. Soon all the kids wanted one. Yummy!

Rose snuggling in my lap while watching Ratatouille.

Destinie changing Sloane's diaper like a pro.

I hope your kids have fond memories of the night, too. It really was a great bonding night. It is so wonderful to see new friendships form and others deepen. I'm already looking forward to next month!

Musicale, Movies, Music, and More!

This week was quite a festival of artistic talents! All of the kids started out in the sanctuary to see part of the Musicale celebration. Then the World Travelers took off for Hollywood while the toddlers went under the sea.

This week the World Travelers learned all about making movies. Blake Belanger, landscape architect/producer/director extraordinaire taught the World Travelers how to hold and operate a video camera and the basics of movie making. Then the kids got behind and in front of the camera to record interviews with each other. Everyone got a turn recording and talking - some of the interviews were realistic/dramatic, others much more comedic! Then Blake showed everyone how he uses iMovie to edit a long video into a shorter, more awesome one. He also talked about using music in movies to create emotion. The lesson ended by showing a home birthday video that Blake had created for Indigo last year to show everyone what the final product could look like. Our movie from today could be coming to a theatre near you soon, so stay tuned!

In the nursery, our toddlers became whales and traveled under the sea while singing and dancing along to "Baby Beluga." After Katherine read the book version of this famous Raffi song, she put on a Wee Sing CD so the toddlers could sing, dance, and/or play along to music. There was a lot of musical fun going on the nursery today!

Thank you Blake and Kim Belanger, Sandy Nelson, and Katherine Colburn for your awesome teaching - and reporting - talents today. The RE program was in good hands!

National Parks, Monuments, and Buildings

This week was all about national parks, monuments, and buildings. The World Travelers learned how to preserve our nation's most treasured parks and monuments with botanists, Carolyn Ferguson and Mark Mayfield. The toddlers learned all about architecture from Iggy Peck, Architect and our resident architect, Sam Zeller.

Carolyn and Mark helped our World Travelers become junior rangers for the day. The travelers - I mean, rangers - looked at pictures of the Mayfield's travels to some of the most famous parks and monuments in our country. Then they filled out ranger packets. The packets included scavenger hunts, word searches, and drawings. After the lesson, it was time to get outside to explore, learn, and protect our natural landscape at the fellowship. Maeve found a lo

g with moss growing on it and Hunter discovered some cool insects. Thanks to Carolyn and Mark, our rangers are now equipped to protect and preserve our nation's beautiful wonders.

In the nursery, the toddlers learned all about buildings from the book, Iggy Peck, Architect and from architect Sam Zeller. Then they applied their knowledge! Using the cardboard bricks and building blocks in the nursery, the toddlers constructed tall towers, roads, and tables - and then knocked them all down! Sam even got in on the action, building a tower taller than himself. That one was really fun to knock down!

We had a great week with lots of kids in attendance. It was really fun to have all of our friends back from vacation and to make new friends. Yay for the start of school this week! Best of luck everyone!

Dancefest and Wild Things

We had a wild and crazy time this week! The World Travelers put on their dancing shoes and learned some great dances from Mark Moser and his helpers, Elke Lorenz and Terri Franz. The toddlers read Where the Wild Things Are and made puppets with Katherine in the nursery.

After lighting the chalice and sharing joys and concerns, the World Travelers moved to the Inez Alsop room to get their dance on! We learned four dances, increasing in difficulty. The first dance was a German dance called "Little Bird" - or as we know it, "The Chicken Dance." It was a great way to warm up. Some of the travelers even added words to it while we danced - check out the video below! The next dance was an Eastern European dance. It seemed simple at first: two steps to the right, two steps to the left, one step to the right, one step to the left, three stomps. Little did we know that the pace would increase as we danced - by the end, we were moving so fast we needed to rest and get some water. Whew - see the video below! The third dance was a Danish dance called 7 Jumps. Oh boy! This one was especially hard for the adults! Each round of the song got increasingly difficult: one knee - jump, two knees - jump, one elbow - jump, two elbows - jump, head - jump, chest - jump, whole body - jump. Crazy hard - see the video below! The final dance we learned was an Israeli dance called the Fox Dance. Two people sat in the middle as the foxes while the rest of us danced around them and then toward them twice. The first time we waved our hands over them, but the next time they "caught" two of us to replace them in the middle. Very fun - check out the video!

Thank you to Mark, Elke, and Terri for such a great multicultural dancing experience!

The toddlers also had a blast in the nursery. They read Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Then they made puppets of their own wild creations. The puppets are amazing! Some are up on the bulletin board in the nursery, so pop your head in next week and take a look. After their art project, our little wild things played games and sang songs. We could just eat them up, they're so cute!

This was such an amazing weekend - bowling and wild, dance fun on Sunday. Good times all around!

Bowling Fun

Bowl-o-rama!

After putting on some super stylish shoes and finding the right ball, we hit the lanes. They gave us a ramp for the younger kids. It was so fun to see these first-timers lug heavy balls to the ramp and then after push, see the balls sail down the lanes and hit the pins.

The older kids needed no assistance. They really know how to bowl. There were spares and strikes abounding. I see a UU bowling league in our future! :)

Of course bowling works up an appetite so we pooled our resources for a yummy snack. Then we were fueled for a second round.

We had a great time today at the bowling alley. The UU youth bonding continues!

Families

This week both the World Travelers and toddlers learned about families. The World Travelers made family trees with me in the large RE room while the toddlers read about families and drew their own with Katherine in the nursery.

After lighting the chalice and sharing joys and concerns - the traditions of our RE family - I led the World Travelers through the exercise of creating a family tree. We began by drawing trees on pieces of paper. Then we filled them in with the names of our family members: our name went in the trunk and our family members' went on branches. Then we added pictures or symbols next to each family member's name. While writing and drawing, I told stories about my family and English and Irish heritage. Then the World Travelers shared their trees and stories of their families. At the end of the lesson, we imagined different types of family structures and created imaginary families. Lily drew a family of strawberries while Larry created a family of amoebas. To conclude, we wrote in our journals about what family means to us.

In the nursery, Katherine read a book called, Different Families. As the title suggests, this book highlights all the different types of families there are in the world, from more traditional family structures to all sorts of variances. Then the toddlers drew pictures of their own families. Finally, they played as a nursery family with all sorts of toys.

It was a celebration of families today at the fellowship. I hope you continue the celebration at home!