Sunday - "active" activities

A member of my congregation recently handed me a 2003 copy of UU World magazine that had an article in it about making Sunday School "boy friendly". The article said that the basic format of most Sunday School lesson plans (read a story, talk about it, do a craft project) was too passive and didn't interest boys as much as girls.

As I was reading this article, I thought about my classes. We have far more boys than girls from the 3rd grade and up, so our classes are very boy-dominated. And yes, we read a story in almost every class. But no, the boys don't seem to mind that. What we do, though, that is good for both boys and girls who are more active or kinesthetic learners, is that we do a lot of games and activities that get the kids up and moving or working with some kind of manipulative (like blocks).

Church and school don't have to be totally passive experiences, and we can learn a lot from active games. There are several good resources out there for classroom games that are actually meant to teach something (like cooperation, listening skills, etc), so we should all be making our classes more active, also-known-as-boy-friendly.

(here is the 1st-3rd grade class making a "web of life" by tossing a ball of yarn to each other)