By Beth Williams Minister for Religious
Education

50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: On Sunday, December 13, First Unitarian Society Youth Group member Jordan Greenlee represented the Unitarian Universalist faith community by participating in an Interreligious Celebration which honored this anniversary. The Interreligious Celebration was cosponsored by the United Nations Association Greater Chicago Chapter and the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Caroling at Montgomery Place: Nine children, youth and adults from our R.E. Program were joined by Anne Holcomb, Jim Stevens, Alex Coutts and the rest of the Unitarian Universalist community at Montgomery Place for an afternoon of Christmas carol singing on Saturday, December 19. The highlight of the afternoon, at least for the kids, was the singing of all twelve verses of The Twelve Days of Christmas. A special thanks goes to Linnea Anderson for her piano accompaniment.

Intergenerational Movie and Pizza Night: Come young and old on Friday, February 12 at 6:30 p.m. to the Chris Moore Parlor to munch pizza and watch the movie Jumanji. This film with Robin Williams is rated PG. It is billed as an "exciting, thrilling adventure the whole family will love." Intergenerational Movie and Pizza Night is sponsored by the First Unitarian Society Religious Education Council.

A New Children’s R.E. Class has formed: Our Adventurers class (age 3 to Kindergarten) has grown so large that we have had to split it! Beginning the first Sunday in February, our children age 3 to 4 1/2 will form the Discoverers class under the able supervision of R.E. teacher Marge Saphir. The Discoverers will use "Celebrating Me and My World," a pre-school curriculum from the Unitarian Universalist Association. This class will meet on the upper level of the Pennington Center, sharing space with the Little People’s Learning Center pre-school.

Read Any Good Books Lately? Be sure to visit our new Parenting Resource Library in the R.E.Classroom in the Pennington Center. Members and friends of the First Unitarian Society of Chicago may borrow any book from our shelves for a period of three weeks. Here is a sample of our titles: 40 Ways to Raise a Non-racist Child, by Barbara Mathias & Mary Ann French; When Children Ask About God, by Harold S. Kushner; Helping Children Cope With Divorce, by Edward Tayber; It’s Perfectly Normal-Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health, by Robie H. Harris, and much more! Please contact Rev. Beth Williams if you have any contemporary books on family or parenting issues that you would like to donate to our new library.

I Hear Music in the Air: Many of our R.E. classes use music as a component of their curricula to enrich their learning experience. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we are finally at a point where we do not have enough portable cassette/CD players to put one in every classroom. If you have a "boombox" that you could contribute to our R.E. program, Rev. Beth Williams would love to hear from you.

February Calendar Events

Saturday, February 6: R.E. Council Workshop with Central Midwest UUA District Religious Education Consultant Dori Davenport, Chris Moore Parlor, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Friday, February 12: Intergenerational Movie & Pizza Night, 6:30 p.m., Chris Moore Parlor.

Sunday, February 14: Kids’ Church - Honoring Whitney Young: African-American Statesman and Unitarian, 10:15 a.m., Woolman Hall.