Registration is open for the 2025 Annual Conference, at Atlanta Friends Meeting and online, April 11-13! Join us around the table for fellowship, learning, and worship together with our religious education community of practice. All are welcome!
During the Christmas season and other holidays, Friends Meetings may celebrate as a way to experience wonder and light, rejoice in intergenerational community, and engage in cultural traditions. At the same time, we are called by the testimony of simplicity that is essential to Quaker faith and practice. We celebrate, in part, for the sake of children in our meeting and recognize that when the adult Friends who curate these celebrations are centered, the spiritual meaning comes through for children.
During the Christmas season and other holidays, Friends Meetings may celebrate as a way to experience wonder and light, rejoice in intergenerational community, and engage in cultural traditions. At the same time, we are called by the testimony of simplicity that is essential to Quaker faith and practice. We celebrate, in part, for the sake of children in our meeting and recognize that when the adult Friends who curate these celebrations are centered, the spiritual meaning comes through for children.
Explore how the arts complement, enrich, and strengthen our practices and programs. They add new dimensions to creative reflection and open joyful opportunities for building intergenerational community. This presentation was originally given during the 2023 QREC...
Learn about using arts in Quaker Religious Education (RE) practices and programming in this presentation by Laura MacNorlin from the 2023 QREC Annual Conference.
In the season of Christmas and festivals of light, we consider how to celebrate in the manner of Friends: How do we approach this season as Friends? What can we share with Quaker religious education colleagues from our experience? What can we share with families in...
Maryland was the first state in the U.S. to mandate service learning for high school students. Service learning is a teaching method that combines meaningful service to the community with curriculum-based learning. Students improve their academic skills by applying...
Friends, young and old, play through Quaker history in this hands-on exploration of historical Friends from George Fox to present-day Friends in your monthly meeting. Adult volunteers prepare for the class by studying a historical Friend to prepare for role-playing in...
Since the beginning of the Religious Society of Friends, we have found “the Light” to be a helpful way of talking about the Divine. Today, we often speak about “the Light within” and “holding each other in the Light,” but not all Friends know that the image of the...
Use this coloring page when the world seems to need brightening. Author and illustrator, Anne Nydam (Wellesley Meeting, NEYM), invites you to send colored pages for posting in her on-line gallery: Nydam Prints, Black and White Download the image Fill This Day with...
Simple, direct statements are paired with watercolor illustrations to highlight some of the rallying causes for organized marches throughout the history of the United States. The text and art begin with two marches that will reemerge as metaphor later in the book: a...
Celebrating What’s Already True About Your Children The Quaker emphasis on Truth creates a wonderful jumping off point for conversations with children about special capacities they have (spiritual gifts) and ways those gifts help them to engage with others in ways...
Many faiths mark the transition of young people to teenage/adult status with a special process: learning, performance or ceremony. Quakers do not have a particular tradition for doing this. Some Friends have felt a yearning to honor this transition within their...
This article is a modern enactment of the parable of the talents, and speaks to what can be done together with the right leading. I am trying to remember the Hubbard squash seeds. Did they arrive in my childhood, sixty years ago? I am not sure. I surely remember...
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...
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...
Activities to Pair with Books and Music HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE Please use these ideas in ways that work best for your children. The Concepts listed and Bible Readings are for grown-up background material to support you. Reading aloud the book together, or watching...
Meeting Needs linked with FGC Resources: A Sampling (Bolded words can be put into a search engine like Google this way — “FGC clearness committees”, or "FGC outreach” for example or into the FGC search window on the website without the “FGC”) Outreach: How can we...
Join us in an exciting pop-up partnership between Friends Peace Teams and the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative! We are starting a pilot project organizing Friendly Holiday Gift Fairs as a way to learn about, celebrate, and support peacemaking through "gifts...
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...
Three Christmas holiday traditions at Birmingham Friends Meeting (West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA) are described in the attached document: 1. The Giving Tree, a service project of the Birmingham Meeting Youth Committee in collaboration with a local homeless shelter....
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...
Reverse Advent: For Families and RE Programs, An Activity to Teach the Spiritual Discipline of Reaching Out In December, young people and their families have an opportunity to connect a story of the season with service to a local food cupboard or shelter. While...
In 2016, when global warming left the entire city of La Paz without drinking water for weeks, the Friends International Bilingual Center (FIBC) seized the teachable moment to educate children about the crisis and what they could do to help. Through QREC, Friends in...
