The Learning Umbrella

Yesterday was the kick-off for my church’s summer stint with the Earth Scouts program.  Using it as the Sunday morning programming is different from what we did during the year, primarily because we don’t have all the parents there with their kids.  However, we’ve had a really good turn out of volunteers signing up to help each Sunday, and it was a good thing I had those volunteers yesterday!

We tie-dyed shirts yesterday, and 15 kids showed up for this activity.  About half of them remembered to bring their shirts, and I had just the right number of “spare” shirts to hand out.  Lucky!  Then I also had some extra volunteers show up, so that I had enough to station one adult at each table I’d set up.  Also lucky!  It was a very messy and active time, but lots of fun was had by all.

Next week we won’t be so crazy.  The plan is to start a badge for Human Rights, once again focusing on Hunger issues.  Hunger issues are ones that even really little kids grasp easily.  We will be using the story Stone Soup to introduce the idea, with our older kids reading through a dramatization of the story, and our younger kids getting a story corner with an adult reading some of the many picturebook versions of the story.  We will also have a discussion “pit” as a third station, with the books Material World and A Life Like Mine to look at and discuss how much more “stuff” we have here in America.

Then the next meeting will be a simple one with time for art, followed by a Sharing Circle with a chance for each kid to tell about their creation.

Our Action for this badge is going to be to prepare a meal that will be taken to the homeless camp in town.  Our church has been hosting the camp, but unfortunately the timing isn’t working out so they will have moved on to another church before we can do this.  We’ll have to load it up in a vehicle on Sunday and a volunteer will drive it over.

We’ll be keeping track of everyone’s participation in their badge books.  I think this is going to be a fun summer, and I’m curious to see how many kids attend.  Traditionally, our summer program is very small.  However, with travel expenses what they are, I predict fewer families will travel this summer.  Attendance numbers may be higher because of that.