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First Church Religious Education The First Church in Salem provides Religious Education each and every Sunday of the church year for ages P/K through 8. We strive to provide a broad based interfaith curriculum that introduces our children to many stories from the Bible. Our Sunday School presents a pageant in the Spring, as well as extra-curricula activities, Family Fun Nights, and acting workshops. Please contact the church for more information. In addition, child care is offered for infants and toddlers. We also provide Religious Education for adults, through Bible Study, small discussion groups, and our popular Reel Spirituality programs. Check our calendar below for our Religious Education Programs -
coming soon! If you have any questions about the programs you see
listed below, please click
here. In the meantime, below is a copy of our latest article from the church newsletter, The Herald. * * * * * * * RE Easter Calendar 2008
Palm Sunday We will have a Procession of Palms by the children, and music provided by The First Church Choir. Following the service, and Fellowship Hour, we will have our annual Eggstravaganza Egg Decorating Party, for the children of our Sunday School. ***Note to parents/caregivers: Please remember to bring one dozen hard-boiled eggs per child for the festivities. Easter Sunday Join us as we celebrate Easter - The First Church way!!! We will
have our annual Easter Sunday service, with special music by the
First Church Choir. Following the service will be our annual Easter
Egg Hunt, for the children of the Sunday School. ***
Note to parents/caregivers: please remember to bring one dozen plastic,
candy filled eggs, per child - no nuts, please! You can bring in
your eggs any time after March 9th!
Below please find copies of recent Religious Education Columns from our monthly newsletter, The Herald. March 2008 In Religious Education we are continuing our study of major world
religions. We have begun Hinduism and are enjoying our explorations
immensely. If you catch a whiff of sandalwood incense during the
Sunday service you are not imagining it! We are creating an authentic
atmosphere to better understand Hindu beliefs and practices! We
have learned that 13.3% of the World’s population is Hindu,
most of them living in India. Our students will gain a basic understanding
and respect for this ancient and colorful religion and the people
who practice it. Youth Sunday is April 13th this year. We truly hope every child
in our Religious Education program can participate. I am including
the rehearsal schedule here so families are able to plan ahead.
I will be sending a sign up by email so we can plan for each child
who wants to participate. Attending at least two out of the three
rehearsals is what we hope for, but we will always make exceptions!
February 2008 We are happy to be having relatively quiet Sundays in our RE program now after the intense activities of the Holidays. We are diving back into our studies and resuming our routines, which is very nice for both the teachers and students. I thought this would be a perfect time to share some of RE’s philosophy on curriculum with the congregation. In the First Church Sunday School we use a modified emergent curriculum strategy. What this means is we set forth general guideline topics for the year, such as UU identity, Biblical literacy or World religions. These topics come from the UUA curriculum guidelines, the Seven Principles and Sources of Our Faith, from Rev. Jeff, the teachers or from the Congregation. When we bring these topics to our classrooms, we use an organic approach. We guide the children to the subject manner in an age appropriate way and let their interest determine the direction we pursue and the duration of class time spent on each topic. We have found this approach to be successful in keeping the children interested and engaged. We are also able to tailor specific lessons based on the needs of our own children and the interests of our congregation. Anyone who has questions about our curriculum is always invited to ask Valentina or myself. Currently we are studying World Religions in our Sunday School classes. This topic comes from the UU Sources of our Faith: “Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life” and from the Fourth Principle which is “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” We are greatly enjoying this unit and are always surprised by the insights of the children! If you have experience in a religion we would love to have you come and share with our students. Laura Clark will be doing a slightly different unit based on friendship and acceptance in our First Steps class. This will be Laura Clark’s last year with us as she pursues college next year. Miss Laura has been with us for several years, starting as a babysitter then becoming a classroom assistant and has now led the First Steps class for two years. We have been very lucky to have such an able young person working with us! Happy Winter, January 2008 I would like to nominate the children of the First Church for a Tony Award for their performance in this year’s Christmas Pageant! They were so enthusiastic and so darned cute! What a special tradition for us all to have to remind us about why we celebrate Christmas! Bravo! And thanks to Max Burbank who not only directs but also rewrites this play every year to personalize each child’s lines. He keeps our tradition fun and fresh. Thanks to Santa for taking time out of his busy schedule to visit the children of the First Church for our annual Children’s Christmas party. We had over 40 children, each of whom received a special little gift from Santa! Just seeing the children so excited about Santa and so pleased with the small gift he brought each of them was enough to put me in a holiday mood! Special thanks to members of the congregation who donated towards this event. Our religious education program is well supported by all of you! Our Cider and Ornament sale with the Garden Club December 1st and 2nd was a great success. The children raised over $550 towards their Horizons for Homeless Children project! We would not have been so successful without the generous support of Mimi Ballou and Joan Hannah. We have a Family Fun Night coming up on January 25th.We invite all members (you do not have to have a child in RE!) to join us that evening for crafts and games. These evenings have become social events for the adults as well as the children. Please join us! Finally Chocolate Sunday is coming! On February 3rd we will celebrate
Fair Trade with chocolate creations! Please get out your cookbooks
and plan to bring in I wish you all joy, love, and contentment in the New Year. Peace, Deb DiGiulio
December 2007 November has flown by and we are gearing up for the exciting month of December! Our Sunday School students have chosen their Social Justice project for this year. They have voted to support Horizons for Homeless Children. Horizons for Homeless Children is an independent, nonprofit organization providing services for homeless children and their families in Massachusetts. ( www.horizonsforhomelesschildren.org ) We will be doing fundraising projects throughout the year to raise money for this organization and will be learning about the problems faced by homeless children and their families. We hope to have a visit to one of their facilities in the spring. Anyone wishing to participate in this project with us is most welcome! Contact Deb D or Valentina. In November The First Church was happy to host the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Strong for a Religious Education gathering called “When Change is in the Air, DRE’s and RE Committees Working Together for Change”. Several area churches’ ministers, Religious Education Directors and RE committees attended. Our own RE committee and guests learned some strategies for adapting ourselves as our program grows. This is the first time we have hosted a Mass Bay District Event here at the First Church. Our guests were thrilled to see our beautiful church and we were very pleased to show it off a bit! The Reverend Liz Strong will also be visiting our RE Program on December16th. She is a wonderful and interesting person so please take the opportunity to introduce yourself to her if you can! The children have begun the annual Guest at our Table collection sponsored by the UUSC. This is a project geared toward the entire congregation! Please be sure to pick up your ‘Guest” box or envelope in the Barnard room. We hope to top last year’s donation from The First Church to this worthy cause. If you would like more information about the UUSC or the “Guest” program please ask one of the students, they would love to tell you what they know! We will collect the boxes in January. We are now beginning the fun and exciting month of December! This will be my second year as RE Director here and I can’t tell you how much our special events and traditions for December already mean to me. We will be holding our annual ornament sale during fellowship on December 9th and 16th. The children are very proud of the beautiful ornaments they have crafted and are looking forward to showing off their creative talents to all of you. Our Christmas pageant will be performed on December 23rd during regular services followed by our children’s Christmas party. We are gearing up in our class time to make this year’s events as fun and memorable as ever. I hope these events bring as much joy to the congregation as they do to those of us lucky enough to work with the children directly during this special season. For parents with children in Our RE program please be sure to take note of the dates for our rehearsals and events this month. I understand how busy the Holiday Season can get for all of us. I do feel strongly that the message and feeling the children get out of participating in our church sponsored holiday events become meaningful Christmas memories that they will carry into adulthood. Joy of the Season to all,
November 2007 Wow, we are through our very busy October! What a lot of fun we have had! We baked bread together for World Communion Sunday, with a lot of help from our friends and parents in the congregation. We had a great time together at Family Fun Night, with about 34 children participating and a large group of adults all joining us to socialize and help out. We treasure our traditional costume parade to celebrate Halloween. This year’s was as exciting as ever! The children really love this tradition in our church and look forward to it every year, and I’m sure the entire congregation takes pleasure in watching the children excitedly showing off their costumes. We followed this event with stories, games and crafts in Wilson Hall. Everyone had fun! While all these special events left little time for traditional
study, the Senior class did have time to further their inquiry into
what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. We discussed the new
UU ad in Time magazine and watched the video “Voices of a Liberal
Faith”. (www.uua.org/visitors) We followed up by writing in
our journals. Our Junior and First Steps classes are continuing their study of the Seven Principles. Valentina did a wonderful lesson on Johnny Appleseed, who was a preacher, a naturalist and a very interesting person. The children used apple slices and paint to make prints. It was a messy hands on lesson that was thoroughly enjoyed by all the children! Reverend Jeff keeps us all thinking with his unique and insightful
children’s moments. These moments are thoughtfully prepared
to help the RE instructors introduce our themes for the day and
give the Congregation a hint about what we are working on in our
classes. Thank you Reverend Jeff for giving all of us something
to reflect upon! On November 12th the First Church will host an RE gathering called “When Change is in the Air, DRE’s and RE Committees Working Together for Change”. Led by the Rev, Dr. Elizabeth Strong, MBD RE Program Consultant. Seven DRE’s their RE committees and ministers will come together to learn about running a growing Religious Education program. Anyone who is interesting in attending should contact Deb DiGiulio.
October 2007 September is here and we are off and running! We have a very busy
fall planned in our Religious Education classes. We are continuing
our explorations of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.
The four major areas we are focusing on are; the religions of the
world, our Jewish and Christian heritage, UU heritage and principles,
and community service and the goal of ethical living. In addition to our studies, we have lots of special events coming
up. October 7th is World Communion Sunday and the RE classes will
be baking bread. We are doing the children’s table for Fellowship
on October 14th. Our annual Halloween party and parade is on October
28th!. Deb DiGiulio,
September 2007 Welcome to another church year here at The First church! We’re busy getting things ready for the Sunday School. Classes begin on Homecoming Sunday, September 9th. We will begin with a review of what we learned last year about our identity as Unitarian Universalists. We will be having a special meeting for parents on Sunday, September 16, which will be an orientation time for families to hear what’s planned for the Sunday School in the near and far future. It will take place immediately after fellowship, and not last longer than thirty minutes. Please come and join us! A tentative list of activities and dates are below. Enjoy the last few days of summer—and we’ll see you in September!
August 2007 We are working on curriculum and events for the Fall. We will be mailing a calendar and registration form towards the end of August.
Deb DiGiulio & January 2007
~ Deborah DiGiulio
December 2006 A Note from our New RE Director Thank you all for the warm welcome to the First Church. I am very pleased to be a part of this vibrant community. I have certainly chosen an exciting and busy time of year to get to know you and the children! We have lots planned for December. The children will be selling
ornaments they have made to raise money for the MSPCA . We will
be making Advent wreaths and rehearsing for the pageant, which is
on December 17th, and the Christmas party, with a “special”
visitor, will be after Fellowship that day. ~ Deb DiGiulio
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