Closing Lesson: For use as the final lesson of the curriculum Who Are Our Partners Around the World? in US congregations. If your church has a partner church, refer to that church throughout this lesson. If not, choose one of the countries you visited using this curriculum and pretend that people from a congregation in that region are coming to visit you. If there is a member who has visited Unitarians in another country, choose that country and invite the member to join you for this lesson.

 

Who Are Our Partners in the United States? Host Version

 

Goal: To learn more about the history, customs, beliefs and practices of Unitarian Universalists in the United States. To talk about how to host visitors from our partner church. (If possible, invite a member(s) of your Partner Church Committee who has visited your partner church to attend this session.)

 

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 513KB

Game Flaps PDF file 908KB

Beliefs and Practices and Customs Graphic PDF file 2.1MB

Beliefs and Practices Cards MS Word file 54KB PDF file 95KB

Customs Cards MS Word file 46KB PDF file 89KB

  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 passport: UUA logo (MS Word file 229KB PDF file 680KB) . Date stamp (optional)
  6. Copies of the founder story (MS Word file 31KB PDF file 71KB) and the guided imagery to read aloud (MS Word file 39KB PDF file 73KB).
  7. Snack from the United States: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, juice or milk.
  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 is the last session in the curriculum, “Who Are Our Partners around the World?” And the final partner country that we’re going to learn about is us! We’re going to pretend that people from our partner church in___________are coming to visit us. We know they’ll have lots of questions about Unitarian Universalism in the United States and about our church, so we want to be ready. The game this morning will help us answer some of the questions they might have; it will also help us think about what we’d like our partner church members to know about us and what we would do to welcome them if they really did come to visit us.”

 

“Since we’re citizens of the United States, we don’t need our passports this morning. So I’ll take them out and leave them here for you to take home with you at the end of the morning to keep for good to remind you of all you’ve learned about our Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist partners from around the world.”

 

Make Game Cards

“When our guests come, they will want to learn all about us.  An easy way to do that would be to play a Board Game about us.  Let’s try it out now to see how it would be.  Before we play the game we’re going to make up some cards of our own, cards that will tell our visitors some specific things about our church here in _________.  Imagine that you were visiting us here for the first time: what questions would you have—about the building, the people, the town? What special programs, worship services, events, activities etc. would you want to tell our partner church people about?”

 

[Go around the circle brainstorming ideas and taking notes. Make at least 5 new cards for the game: they could be either Customs Cards or Beliefs and Practices Cards.  Write out your items on the blank cards you prepared earlier and add them to the others you have downloaded to use with this lesson.]

 

Game: (take out of suitcase) Partners! in the United States: (20-30 minutes)

Set up:

  1. Place the game boards on tables or the floor. Divide the students 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. Add your new ones at the end (highest numbers).

Object of the Game: To move everyone in your group along the path from Start to Finish.

Rules:

  1. Establish who will start by a roll of the die—highest 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 out loud. Follow directions, ie: 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.

 

Reflection (10 minutes)

[Serve the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with juice or milk before you begin this discussion section.  Eat while the group is discussing.]

 

“How many of you have ever been to a foreign country?” [If anyone has, elicit comments about what they liked best and what was hard, exciting, missing, different from, the same as they were used to at home.]

 

“While we’re eating our snack, let’s take a minute to silently imagine what it would be like to visit our church if you couldn’t speak English and you’d never before been in America. What would you like people to know about you?” [For instance, you might want people to know what you like to eat, or how you like to dress, or how you like to spend your free time.]

 

[After a brief silence, ask the group to identify things they think we should know about our visitors that would make them feel comfortable and welcome. Invite your visiting Partner Church Committee member to share his or her experiences traveling to your partner church or communicating with your partner church over the years.]

 

Ask:

“How can we find out some of these things? If our visitors don’t speak English, what could we do to still connect closely with them and make their visit to our church easier and more fun? What games could we play without speaking the same language? Where could we take our visitors in town that they would enjoy? Other ideas?”

 

[Make a list of ideas about how to find out more about our visitors and how to make them comfortable and give them a good time. Give the list to the Partner Church Committee.  Be sure your list includes inviting them ahead of the visit to bring photos, cassette tapes, etc. with them.  Also: maps, meeting with congregation members who have already visited there, looking at presents that have been exchanged with your partner and talking about why these particular presents were given.]

 

Conclusion (10 minutes)

Collect ideas/suggestions for improvement for “next year” or “the next time” when another group will be learning from “Who Are Our Partners around the World?”

 

Sing “Under One Sky.”  Thank your helpers.  Then excuse the students one by one by passing out their passports to take home. (Passports of students not in church that day should be mailed to them.)