Looking for excellent children’s books to illustrate Friends faith and practice? Start HERE with the Sparkling Still LibraryThing collection, a continuously updated catalog by theme and age group.
Sparkling Still LibraryThing Collection
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Resources for 4 to 5 years
33 Multicultural Children’s Books About Peace
Every day can be about creating peace. Here are some multicultural books on peace for Quaker collections......
Northern Yearly Meeting Children and Youth Policy Manual
Policies and procedures for facilitating programming for children and youth in Northern Yearly Meeting. The manual includes: NYM Children & Youth Committee member role description, Personnel policies for youth serving employees, Responsibilities for reporting...
My Mandala: What is Your Spiritual Journey?
This experiential curriculum uses mandalas to help children learn about their past and current connection to the Divine and to their faith community. Can be taught in one or more lessons. From the author… "In 2017, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions...
The Gardener
Lydia Grace Finch brings a suitcase full of seeds to the big gray city, where she goes to stay with her Uncle Jim, a cantankerous baker. There she initiates a gradual transformation, bit by bit brightening the shop and bringing smiles to customers' faces with the...
Family Worship Pamphlet
What a challenge our form of worship is for children! Even if you just consider the visuals — "still forms on every side" — it looks like a room full of adults either falling asleep or being punished with a time out. How can we help our children feel the depth, the...
Books for these trying times with COVID-19
A listing of nine books with brief synopses that we think have a message for children in these trying times. Many of the stories are about children overcoming challenges.We hope the books encourage you to think about other things, and appreciate the beauty around us....
Lucky Beans
Lesson plan for the home with a book and activities. 1930's Great Depression is the setting of a boy's ingenuity in helping his family. Like so many people during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Marshall Loman's dad has lost his job. There's little money, but there...
What Do You Do with an Idea?
Lesson plan for the home with a book, music and activities. What do you do with an idea? Especially an idea that's different, or daring, or a little wild? This is the story of one brilliant idea and the child who helps to bring it into the world. As the child's...
Baseball Saved Us
Lesson plan for the home with a book, video and activities. The Japanese American concentration camp experience during World War II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Shorty and his family, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, have been forced to...
Quiet
Lesson plan for the home with book, videos and activities. The author reminds us that mindfulness‚ "being quiet, still, and present with one another" is a very special thing. Everything is in such a hurry, busy as busy can be. The birds are flying so fast, the...
Good People Everywhere
Lesson plan for the home with a book, video and music. Good People Everywhere is a soothing story to help children become mindful of the beautiful, caring people in their world. Each page delightfully unfolds with vibrant, engaging illustrations and endearing stories...
A is for All the Things You Are
A lesson plan for the home with a book, music and activities: A Is for All the Things You Are: A Joyful ABC Book is an alphabet board book developed by the National Museum of African American History and Culture that celebrates what makes us unique as individuals and...
Centering Tools: Mandalas
"It all starts with stopping," says author Beth Collea, as she describes how the practice of coloring mandalas helps young children settle. Links are provided to websites with free, printable mandalas from the simple to the intricate. This tool is useful for family...
What is Given from the Heart
A little boy and his mother fall on hard times, but discover that they can still give heartfelt gifts. A touching story of compassion, this is the last picture book authored by one of America's best loved children's authors. "Misery loves company," Mama says to James...
The Light: A Story for December
Cultures all over the world celebrate festivals of Light, often in December. This story, told in the Faith & Play style. uses symbols of Light in a simple, profound way to introduce these festivals in Quaker religious education.
Uncle Vova’s Tree
Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and children gather at a farm house to celebrate Christmas in the Russian tradition. Based on Polacco's childhood memories, this is the story of her Great-uncle Vladimir, known as Vova, and his colorful and inventive celebrations of the...
Settling Routine
We use this settling routine from Ann Arbor (MI) Friends Meeting with all our kids, sometimes omitting a line or two. It's important to have chairs an appropriate height for all children so their toes can touch the floor. Sitting on the floor with knees bent and feet...
Loaves and Fishes
This picture-book version of the Biblical parable of the loaves and fishes tells the story from the perspective of the young boy who offers up his simple lunch of rye bread loaves and fish he'd caught at his quiet fishing spot to Jesus, who uses them to feed the...
Religious Education for the Home and Small Meeting
This is an idea packet assembled for families and small meetings who seek to educate children in Quaker faith and practice. Originally published in 1986, this is a treasure trove, worthy of adaptation and revision given that most Quaker meetings still face these...
Thy Friend, Obadiah
Obadiah, a young Quaker boy living in colonial Nantucket, is constantly followed by a sea gull. Obadiah wishes the seagul would leave him alone, but when it does leave, he yearns for its companionship. This story helps young children learn about the importance of...
Busy Box
A Busy Box can be kept on hand should children arrive at a small meeting with no formal religious education program. For Meetings with an RE program, the Busy Box is useful to help young Friends quietly join Meeting for Worship before or after the lesson. Friendly...
Plays for the Christmas Holidays
We are grateful to Nancy Pickering of Middletown Friends Meeting (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting) for three plays celebrating the Christmas season This is the Stable, A simple telling of the Nativity with readings from the book by Cynthia Cotten, illustrated by Delana...
Peaceable Kingdom and the Penn Treaty
This lesson explores the Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable Kingdom (1820), beginning with a famous passage from the book of Isaiah. The focus then turns to the background of the painting depicting the treaty between William Penn and early Friends...