May Plans

Hello and welcome back to the Children's Empowerment Workshop blog. During the Month of May we will be connecting the Children's Empowerment Workshop to the church focus of the stewardship campaign. The church stewardship campaign's theme is 

"We have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not belong to us." 2 Corinthians 

Currently we have three plans in the works for the children's empowerment workshop in connection with this theme.

1. We have been given our own clay jar to fill up with our gifts. This Sunday May 10 children can bring change from home to start filling up our jar. We will also ask members of the congregation to bring their change to help us fill up our jar. This Sunday during the Empowerment Workshop period we will be doing a Mother's Day project. It is a good one, so bring your kids and allow them to participate! 

2. During the following two Sundays we will focus on talking about personal gifts and how they can be a gift to the community. During these Sundays we will also be making pottery clay jars.

3. There will be a large jar present in worship every Sunday this month. People are being asked to put slips of paper with their own gifts or offerings in this jar. The children can choose to write about their gifts and add them to the large jar or they can add them to the Sunday school jar. I would encourage you to sit down with your child at home and have a conversation about what people in your family could add to the jar. This would be a great way to prepare them for the conversations we will be having in Sunday school. Perhaps you and your child could add something to the jar together.

Now a new topic...Our tie dye t-shirts! After the children dyed the t-shirts Christa took them to Sprague High School in Salem where the students there created a silk screen logo for The Children's Empowerment Workshop. Now the shirts are back and ready to be given to the children. We are asking for $7 per shirt. If any grown ups want a shirt silk screened with the same logo please bring a shirt and we can have it printed for you. We will be wearing these t-shirts are various times during the year. Let's all wear them together the first time during May's combined service!

Emily

Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter

Welcome Back to the Blog! The month of March has been a great time downstairs at FCC's Children's Empowerment Workshop. We have been focusing on Standing Up for ourselves. We have focused in on this topic through a variety discussion topics, Bible verses, children's books, and art projects. A good time has been had by all. We are not nearly done talking about Standing Up for ourselves and will probably need another month on this topic before we are ready to move on to our next Stand Up topic. But, before we even think about that we need to pause for the very important days approaching on the church calendar. These days are Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Easter. We will have special church activities on all of these days and you are welcome to attend and participate in all of them.

Palm Sunday

This Sunday April 5th is Palm Sunday. During the second service of worship at FCC we will be waving palm branches and possibly even the ribbons to celebrate Palm Sunday. This is always a fun event for the children. During the Children's Empowerment Workshop (aka Sunday school) we will have two very special activities taking place. 

The first one is that we will be tie dying shirts with the youth. The youth are tie dying as part of their "youth groupie" program and the children will be tie dying because it is fun and festive! The children's shirts will later be silk screen printed with a Stand Up! logo as part of Children's Empowerment Workshop theme. The second activity for Palm Sunday is that we will be making pretzels. This is one of our traditional lenten activities and Palm Sunday is the last day to sneak in our pretzel lesson before we move onto the fatty, fun, and festive days of Easter. 

In order to tie dye this Sunday I need all the parents to comment to the blog, email, or call me (whatever is easiest) with the sizes of shirts their children wear. Christa will be purchasing shirts on Friday so we need all shirt orders in by Thursday evening! If your child will not be at church on Sunday we would love to dye a shirt for them so PLEASE email me the size regardless of if you know you will be in attendance or not! We will discuss the price of the shirts later after the expenses come in. It should not be prohibitive and if it is please let me know and we can work it out. What is most important is that ALL kids get to participate in one way or another.

Holy Week

We have one activity for the children taking place during Holy Week. This activity will be our annual Maundy Thursday dinner, egg dying party, and service. Maundy Thursday is Thursday April 9th. The child friendly dinner of spaghetti, salad, bread, and fruit will begin at 5:00. The children are welcome to start dying eggs as soon as they are finished eating. You may bring your own eggs from home to dye and then take back home, or you may bring eggs to dye and then donate to stone soup, or you may dye eggs that have been purchased and donated for the event. Communion will take place down at the dinner and you may choose to bring your children back into McLean Hall if you wish them to be part of that. There will also be a new, interesting Maundy Thursday service at 6:45 that the children are invited to attend. This service will be short, but dynamic and probably interesting to the kids. Plan to attend!

For Maundy Thursday we need donations of eggs, egg dye, and volunteers. I will be setting up the egg dying stations at 4:00 pm. I have to work at 6:00 pm and thus will need adults to help with egg dying and clean up. Please come help set up as well if you are available.

Easter

Easter begins at FCC with the "Sunrise" Service at 7:00 am. Easter breakfast will be served from 7:30 to 10:30. The Folk Service starts at 8:45 am. The Celebration service with the activities for the children starts at 10:45. This year the children's activities will include Hot Cross Buns, the Flower Cross, and the Easter Egg Hunt. 

For Easter we need donations of plastic easter eggs (to the office or to me before Maundy Thursday), flowers for the cross brought to church on Easter Sunday, and VOLUNTEERS on Easter Sunday to help hide eggs, help decorate the cross, and help with the general mayhem. 

Thank you for making your way to the end of this posting. Feel free to comment or email with your RSVP for these events (knowing some of who is coming is always helpful), how you are able to help with donations or volunteer time, and YOUR CHILD"S T-SHIRT SIZE (before this Thursday evening).

Love to all of you,

Emily

March Plans - STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!

3/1 - Who Are You?

• Start on life-size personal portraits
• Discuss personal characteristics and add them to portraits
• Psalm 139: 13, 14 "it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works."
• Matthew 5:13-16 "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored...? You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven.

3/8 - Different / Same Sunday

• How are my characteristics different / same as friends, friends expectations, family, family members expectations?
• Compare and contrast life size portraits with other members of Sunday school

3/15 - Do the Right Thing for Yourself!

• Why?
• How do I know what the "right thing" is?
• Matthew 5:43 "You have heard it said 'you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' but I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
• Matthew 7:12 "Do Unto Others as you would have others do unto you."

3/22 - Stand Up for Yourself!

• Peer Pressure
• Parental Pressure
• Societal Pressure
• Matthew 7:13 "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

3/29 - Combined Service

• Meg and Doug will lead a lesson that is based on some of their experiences in Africa!

Good News for Combined Services

Hello Everyone,

Yesterday we had a very successful combined service at FCC Corvallis. I made up folders with activities in them for the kids who wanted to stay in the service. Meg and another great babysitter took kids who didn't want to stay in the service downstairs to play and watch a Scholastic video.

The great news that came out of yesterday is that Meg and her husband Doug volunteered to teach Sunday school on the combined service Sundays when Steve and I are being folk musicians instead of Sunday school teachers. Meg and Doug have been babysitters (and so much more) for us for quite a while now. We have not seen them in a few months because Meg and her infant son Reed have been in Zambia since September working on gathering data for Meg's graduate thesis project. Doug spent some time over there with them as well. They would like to take time during Sunday school to share some of their Africa experiences with the children. I am very thankful to Meg and Doug for volunteering to share their experiences with our children.

Have a great week!

Emily

Ready?

Stand Up!

Stand Up for Yourself

Stand Up for Your Friends

Stand Up for Your Community

Stand Up for Creation

Stand Up for the World

Stand Up for God

Wednesday February 18, 2009 a group of parents who have children involved in Sunday school at the First Christian Church in Corvallis met together, along with the pastor John Evans, to discuss the church's Sunday school program. At that meeting the parents discussed issues and values that are important to them in the raising of their kids. While the meeting was going on John Evans listened to the comments from the parents and wrote the "Stand Up" phrases that are listed above. The next day I looked at these phrases and decided that I could develop a Sunday school curriculum that joined the organizing structure of the "Stand Up!" phrases with the issues the parents brought to the meeting. I have named this curriculum The Children's Empowerment Workshop.

The Children's Empowerment Workshop will spend a month on each of the Stand Up phrases. We will start with Stand Up for Yourself in March and move onto a new phrase at the beginning of each month. As we discussed at the meeting, I will post lesson plans each month so that you all will know the topics that are being covered each Sunday.

I hope that this blog will be an exciting space for all of the parents and kids in our Sunday school project. This is a space where we can share ideas, stories, and even plan activities. I am hoping that it will strengthen the communication within our community and also offer a way for people outside our community to see what great things are going on at FCC Corvallis's Sunday school. With all of your permission I will also post pictures and videos of what your kids are doing in class so that you all can share in our empowerment workshop.

Love, 

Emily