Who Are Our Partners in Great Britain?

 

Goal: To learn more about the history, customs, beliefs and practices of British Unitarians.

 

Materials:

  1. The Partnership Suitcase filled with materials for the lesson.
  2. Game boards and card sets: one for every 4-6 children you expect to attend the lesson.

Game Board PDF file 112KB

Game Flaps PDF file 589KB

Beliefs and Practices and Customs Card Graphics PDF file 94KB

Beliefs and Practices Cards MS Word file 57KB PDF file 51KB

Customs Cards MS Word file 38KB PDF file 48KB

  1. Playing pieces from commercial game boards: one for each player. (Monopoly is good since there so many different pieces.)
  2. Dice: 1 die for each game board.
  3. Map of the world. Pushpins and string or yarn.
  4. Homemade passports for each participant (made in Lesson #1)
  5. Page of stickers to put in passports (MS Word file 135KB PDF file 17KB) . Date stamp (optional)
  6. Copies of the founder story to read aloud (MS Word file 36KB PDF file 42KB)
  7. Snack from Britain (MS Word file 32KB PDF file 44KB)
  8. Copies of “Under One Sky” (MS Word file 30KB PDF file 60KB) 

 

As an alternative to downloading all these materials individually, you can save time by downloading a compressed file containing all materials. To do this, your computer must be capable of handling files compressed using WinZip or Stuffit. You have the choice of:

 

Introduction: (15 minutes)

"This morning we are going to take a trip to visit Unitarians Great Britain, which is a country made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We’ll learn more about this later but for now, let’s find Britain on our world map. Right now in Britain it is _____ o'clock on _____day.” [Look this up on the internet, or have a child look it up before this class and report what they found out.] 

 

[Tie one end of a piece of string or yarn to the pushpin marking Great Britain and the other end to one marking your town.]

 

“Now that we know where we are going, we will all need passports.”  [Take the passports out of the Partnership Suitcase, and show them the Britain “sticker” that they will receive when they return from their trip. Tell them this is the British partner church logo. Ask: “What should be done with the passports?” Ans: Keep in a clean pocket or give to you --their trip leader--until they're ready to return.]

 

“This morning we’re visiting a Sunday school class outside of London, England. The children are learning about one of the people who started Unitarianism in England hundreds of years ago. His name was John Biddle. After we hear a story about Biddle, we’ll play a board game that tells us more and helps us think about how British and North American Unitarian Universalists are alike and how we are different.”

 

“Afternoon tea is a British tradition that you may have heard about. Tea is usually served with some kind of cookie or toast. Even though it’s morning now, we’ll have British “tea and shortbread” while we listen to the story.” [Serve snack of tea and shortbread.]

 

Story:Take out of the suitcase and read aloud. (5 minutes)

Game: (take out of suitcase) Partners! in Britain (20-30 minutes)

Set up:

  1. Place the game boards on tables or the floor. Divide the participants into groups of 4-6 players. If you have a wide age range of participants, be sure to play the game with mixed ages so the older ones can help the younger.
  2. Note: the Customs cards and Beliefs and Practices cards are numbered and should be stacked in order in their own pile, face-down with the #1 card on top.

Object of the Game: To move along the path from Start to Finish.

Rules:

  1. Establish who will start by a roll of the die—high number goes first. Moving in clockwise direction, each player rolls the die and moves ahead the number of spaces shown on the die.
  2. Players lift the flap of the square they land on and read the words under it. Follow directions, ie: Move ahead, move back, pick a Customs Card, or pick a Beliefs and Practices Card. Read or answer the question on the card.
  3. The next player goes after all cards are read and questions answered.

 

Stop the game 20 minutes before the end of the session.

 

Conclusion (10 minutes)

Hand out passports and pass out stickers. “This is the symbol of the British Partner Church Program. [Pass around a small role of scotch tape or a glue stick so participants can paste the sticker on to the Britain page.]

 

Sing “Under One Sky.”  Then excuse the students one by one by stamping (or writing and initialing) today's date into their passports on the Britain page.  Tell them next Sunday there will be a trip to __________ and show them that page in their passports.  Welcome them back to __________[their home country] and put all their passports back in the suitcase.