Fall is Looming at Work

Fall is right around the corner, and not only do I need to be ready for that at home, but I also need to be ready for it at church. I'm close - but there's still a lot to do!

I almost bought myself a teacher's planner this year, so that I could write out the lesson plans for each Sunday and keep myself organized. But no commercially available planner at the local stores quite met my needs, so instead I created some tables and stapled them together into my own planner. I have a sheet for each grade level, so I can lay out the sequence of classes. And I have a sheet for each month, so I can see how much I'm trying to do on each given Sunday and have the full picture for that day in one place.

We have been using the Spiritplay method for years in our pre-K classes, and this year I was excited to add in the adaptation of Holidays and Holy days that was recently released. Unfortunately, I didn't catch that it was intended for 3rd grade and up until I had the CD open and was browsing through the stories. But I still really want to bring more holidays and seasonal influence into our Spiritplay class this year, so I need to sit down and simplify, simplify, simplify a few holiday stories.

In our 1st-3rd grade class we are going to use a curriculum we've done before: Spirit of Adventure. It's an active and fun UU identity curriculum, and I've gone through and picked out all the lessons I remember the kids particularly liking last time, as it is a year long curriculum we'll only do for 13 weeks. Sticking with the same curriculum author, we'll do Kate Tweedie Covey's Picture Book World Religions with this class in the winter. I love her stuff!

And then our 4th-5th graders will be doing an exercise to Create a Country based on UU principles this Fall, so we have a rough outline but will have to adapt as we go depending on what sort of decisions the group makes about their country.

I don't have a plan yet for Middle School, but I'm hoping the advisors will be interested in doing Neighboring Faiths when we meet to plan. I've got that meeting scheduled. And then there is the High School youth group, which is planning on doing High School OWL this fall and which I need to get organized for fundraising for a youth trip to Transylvania next August. That will be a big project! I have planning meetings scheduled with the youth advisors and the minister, and then another with the YAC - youth and adult committee - which supports the youth group.

And then I've got an experimental family program starting this fall, to adapt the Evensong for Families curriculum for Sunday mornings - Morning Song. It's been done at the Vancouver, WA. church, and was presented at this year's District Assembly. I'm excited to try it - something family's can do together on Sunday morning.

Well, that's a lot of the What for this fall. But another hugely important question each year is Who? Who is going to teach all these great classes? Every year, I need to recruit almost 30 volunteers! The good news on that front is that I am almost there - I have most of my volunteers, the teams look strong, and I'm in the process of trying to find dates for training meetings that work with everyone's schedule. I meet with each team separately, to go over the What, Why, and How of the upcoming classes, so that will be three meetings there.

And then we need some kids! So I really need to catch up on getting the registration packets out in the mail and the new brochures printed up and the new information up on the church website - that's the area I'm the most behind on! Actually, instead of blogging about it now - I should go do that.