By Dr. Michele Townsend Grove, Interim Director of Religious Education
This summer, the children’s religious education team will lead play activities in an effort to build our community slowly out of pandemic times.
Watch for other news on how, when, and where they activities will take place (there is another article in the eNews with exact dates and times).
Deep within these play activities is an intentional process that meets the following goals:
- It helps to establish and re-establish our UUCUC family community. We have been physically separated for a long time and the art of coming back together needs to be deliberate and sensitive to many different needs.
- It introduces learning opportunity in play, activity, full body motion, and laughter. It also introduces learning in relationship.
Years ago, when I was working with a congregation to build a cooperative pre-school, a colleague introduced this cartoon to me. Granted, it is outdated. But it demonstrates a pedagogy of play better than anything I have found. I am sorry the there is no diversity of skin color, gender, size, and ablism in the cartoon (I have hopes of recreating the message to be more representative) but it does describe the diversity of learning in different forms of play.
The play we develop this summer is religious education. The leaders are working to implement various methods of learning and the participants may never fully realize that they are learning because they will hopefully be having too much fun. A pedagogy of play does not happen without leaders who understand how to make it happen. It also does not happen without leaders who know how to guide this kind of learning. We are fortunate to have such a team. I hope you will come this summer and meet them!