2024-25 Religious Education (RE) Classes

Parker Room (all ages)

Families with children are always welcome to view the service on livestream! This casual and comfy space includes a couch, changing table, and toys for young ones. 

Nursery (6 months – 3 years old)

Always available during our sanctuary service and opens 15 minutes before the start of the worship service. Our youngest children are cared for by loving and consistent childcare staff. Here we create a warm, accepting atmosphere where trust is formed, helping our tiny ones to feel comfortable and safe. Please bring any diapering supplies, food, and other things your child may need. We have sippy cups available to provide water. Parents/caregivers are asked to leave a cell phone number so they can be reached quickly. Parents are welcome to stay, drop off, or pop in and out. **Please bring any food, breastmilk or formula, cup, or diapers that your child may need while in care.**

Preschool (3 – 5 years old)

Many/One
Based on the classic We Are Many, We Are One curriculum and incorporating some additional content, this class features stories, games, and projects. Our goal is to build a loving and caring community for preschool-aged children and their families by encouraging children to honor themselves, the people they know, their religious community, nature and cultures from around the world. Parents are welcome to drop off or stay. 

Kindergarten

Our Houses, Our Homes, Our Bodies
This class helps children develop an expansive sense of home that is grounded in Unitarian Universalist values. Together we learn about the homes we might live in, how the idea of home can help everyone belong, what it means to have a faith home, and our own bodies as our first and most basic place where we might be truly at home.

1st & 2nd Grades

A Year of Wondering
Drawing upon World of Wonder and Wonderful Welcome, we set free our wonderings! How and why are we willing to welcome others into our lives–be they strangers, family, peers, neighbors, and even animal friends and nature itself? What beauty, excitement, and mystery might we experience as part of the interdependent web of all existence? Exploring these and other questions can launch a lifelong practice of being open to the wonder nature can spark.

3rd & 4th Grades

Everyday UU Faith Journey
Unitarian Universalism values the practice of being faithful to what you love. But in order to do this, we have to think about and decide what we love! Signs of Our Faith; Being UU Everyday traits include the quest for knowledge, reverence for life, supporting one another, and public witness. Faithful Journeys offers historic and contemporary examples of Unitarian Universalist faith in action. Stories about real people model how we can activate our own personal agency, and encourage children to share and affirm their personal experiences of faithful action.

5th & 6th Grades

Mirrors and Mystery
Windows and Mirrors nurtures the ability to identify our own experiences and perspectives and to seek out, care about, and respect those of others. Sessions unpack topics that lend themselves to diverse experiences and perspectives—for example, faith heritage, public service, anti-racism, and prayer. There are always multiple viewpoints and everyone’s viewpoint matters. Riddle and Mystery assists young people in their own search for understanding by exploring Big Questions such as Where do we come from? Does God exist? Can we ever solve life’s mystery? How can I know what to believe? What does Unitarian Universalism mean to me?

7th & 8th Grades

Coming of Age (CoA)
As youth prepare to leave childhood and transition into youthhood, we honor this tender and powerful time with a special class that invites participants to develop a greater sense of what they believe and they know what they know; their relationship to mystery and spirit; how they honor their connection to the larger world; their connection to others; and other important markers of personal truth and its developmentally appropriate evolution. This class culminates with a meaningful ritual for participants and their loved ones in Spring 2025. 

High School

Young Religious UU (YRUU)
Our high school youth group is largely what our youth decide it is–including social connection, social justice learning, activism, art projects, church service, and more! Along with trained adult UU leaders, youth get to vision and then implement fun and serious goals with each other, within the church community, and the Portland area.