Rational Sunday School, Take Two

The following describes our second session of the Prescott Freethinkers' Rational Sunday School, our nontheistic, Humanism-inspired children's program. Following the lesson plan is a brief critique of some ways in which this lesson could be improved.

Rational Sunday School

(Preschool – 4^th grade)

Lesson: Imagination

Time: 1 hour

Equipment:

Box of unisex dress-up clothes

Puppets

Blank Notecards

Pens

Magazines with pictures

Scissors

Glue

Blank paper

Introduction

Group Check-In: To open, we gathered in a circle and each said our name, and something we wanted to share about our week.

Topic: Imagination

Kids don’t really need to much help figuring out how to use their imaginations, but we wanted to validate its importance. Besides being fun, thinking imaginatively is essential to solving problems. Some of the most exciting advances in all of the sciences, in engineering, in conflict resolution and so on, have come from people who were able to use their imaginations productively.

Book: Starry Messanger, by Peter Sis

This children’s book about Galileo Galilei describes (with beautiful and evocative pictures) how Galileo utilized imagination to think about what he saw the skies, and how his perseverance and bravery changed everything! We read the book to the kids, and then talked about the pictures and the story.

Imaginative Games

We played several games to encourage the kids to use their imaginations, and for them to learn how to encourage one another as well.

Imagine a Story:

To prepare for this game, we had cut out several magazine pictures and glued one per sheet of paper for each child, and a few extras. The children each drew one picture (not showing it to anyone else) and looked at it carefully, then put it in a pile to be mixed up again. Then, using any available props or dress-up clothes, each child silently tried to act out what they saw in the pictures, so that the group would be able to correctly identify which child was communicating which picture. After each child did their pantomime, we turned over all the pictures, and the group had to guess which picture was being represented. Some examples of pictures included a man sleeping on a pile of bananas, fractals, a bus, several women in a line carrying baskets on their heads.

Making Words Come Alive

Each child was given a blank notecard and a pen, then asked to write down the first word that popped into their head (pre-literate children were given assistance). The notecards were then mixed up and each child drew a card. One child chose a puppet, and incorporating the word on their card, began a story. Then each child took a turn, using a puppet of their choice, adding to the story and in some way incorporating their word into the story.

Snack and Social Time

Imaginative Free Play

For the rest of our time, the children enjoyed playing imaginatively together using the puppets and dress-up clothes.

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Critique of this lessons and tips for others:

We had a lot of fun with this, but without modification these games would be better suited to older children; our preschoolers struggled a bit with figuring out what we were doing. Fortunately, the older kids were great about helping the smaller ones.

Also, I think I could have done a better job creating a lesson that made more explicit the relationship between imagination and science, philosophy, conflict resolution and problem solving in general. I plan to work on developing this idea further and trying another imagination-related lesson in the future. As always, your suggestions are encouraged!