Grades 4-5

A Year of Social Justice

This year-long program explores how we can build a more just and compassionate world. We will spend 10 weeks in Our Whole Lives (OWL), our comprehensive sexuality education program, followed by 8 weeks of MOSAIC, an anti-racism and anti-oppression curriculum. During the spring semester, we’ll dive into The Magic of UU, discovering that real change is possible through courage, creativity, and community. Through hands-on service projects and engaging activities, children will learn how they can make a meaningful difference in their congregation, their community, and the wider world.

OWL Overview:

This program is designed to help children ages nine through twelve to gain the knowledge, life principles, and skills they need to understand and express their sexu ality in holistic, life-enhancing ways. This comprehensive, developmentally appropriate program introduces key topics like values, body image, gender and sexual identity, peer pressure, and healthy relationships with sensitivity and inclusiveness, yet without specifically religious doctrine or reference. Participants will read It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris.  A parent orientation and parent permission are required to attend.  Sessions include:

  • Sexuality and Values
  • Images in Popular Culture
  • Body Image
  • Changes of Puberty
  • Gender
  • Feelings and Attraction
  • Reproduction and Staying Healthy
  • Decisions and Actions
  • Consent and Peer Pressure
  • Healthy Relationships and Celebration

 

 MOSAIC Overview: 

Children will explore individual and communal identity, further understand cultural appropriation, learn historical patterns of racism, gain confidence in daily living our UU values, and learn why UUs support the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Sessions include:

 

  • Our Racial, Skin Color, and Cultural Identities
  • Our Identities Outside of Race & Skin Colour        
  • Celebrating Our Differences        
  • What is Cultural Appropriation     
  • Learning to Recognize Bias and Stereotypes       
  • Letting Anger Lead Us: Harnessing Our Feelings to Move Towards Justice      
  • What Is “Black Lives Matter” and Why Is It Important to Unitarian Universalists?      
  • Creative Jam: Imagine the Beloved Community

 

The Magic of UU:

In these sessions our children become witches and wizards fighting for justice with the strongest weapon–LOVE.  We discover that real change is possible through courage, creativity, and community. Through hands-on service projects and engaging activities, children will learn how they can make a meaningful difference in their congregation, their community, and the wider world. Sessions include:

 

Opening Ceremony–A welcome and introduction to wizarding school, where we will spend the rest of the year learning and applying our wizarding skills to make the world a better place. In this first session, we will name our house, create house rules (covenant), and make wands.

 

Spells–Learn some handy spells and then work to fight hunger in our community.  Prepare for the congregation’s Just One Can food drive. 

 

Potions–Learn to make exciting potions, like Bubotuber Pus.  Continue to fight hunger in our community and begin our Pennies for Puppies and Koins for Kitties campaign, because animals need food too!

 

Prophesizing–Prophesizing is not an exact science. The future is never certain and it can be changed by our choices. We are going to explore some methods of Prophesizing, and then learn about the social justice issue of animal cruelty.

 

Social Action: Animal Welfare–The class will continue our work on the social justice issue of Animal Welfare by preparing for our annual egg hunt to support the Montgomery County Humane Society and the Animal Adoption Center.

 

Defense Against Dark Magic–We are fighting against Dark Magic in society, but witches and wizards also need to learn to defend themselves against Dark Magic inside us.  Today we’ll learn about fighting depression, and then explore the social justice issue of child sickness.  We’ll choose an organization to fundraise for:  Make a Wish Foundation, Ronald McDonald House Charities, or St. Jude Children’s  Research Hospital.

 

Social Action: Child Sickness–The class will continue our work addressing the social justice issue of Child Sickness by making jar soups to sell during coffee hour to benefit the organization chosen the previous week.

 

Care of Mystical Creatures–The class will learn to care for a real-world magical creature, the hummingbird.  We will also begin discussing our next social justice issue, the environment.

 

Social Action: the Environment–We continue our social action work on the issue of the Environment by making Save the Monarch kits. We will provide these kits to congregants after the service for a donation to support a local environmental cause.

 

Social Action: Illiteracy–The class will learn about and work on the social justice issue of Illiteracy.

 

Ancient Symbols–The class will make writing quills and learn to write and translate Ancient Symbols.  We’ll continue to learn about the social justice issue of illiteracy.  

 

Transformation / ClosingCeremony–Transformation is used to change something from its original form into something totally different. We will use origami to transform paper, and discuss how we might also use Transformation to change things about ourselves. We will also review the progress we made this year on our social action projects and hold a Closing Ceremony to mark the end of our year together.