Jen has taught Sunday School and served as Chair of the Religious Exploration program at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Studio City, Ca.  She was recently the children’s program leader at Throop Unitarian Church in Pasadena, Ca.

Jen has designed a non-denominational Sunday School curriculum for ages 4 – 14 that provides an age appropriate and inclusive experience for children participating in liberal worship services.  The curriculum provides as it’s foundation the Unitarian Universalism’s Seven Rainbow Principles and moves into mindful activities designed to foster reverence, create community and engage open minds toward compassionate action in the world.  The curriculum can be adapted to work with a variation of the principles that fits with other denominations.

The Hands, Heart and Mind curriculum is loosely documented and openly shared by Jen to any Sunday School Teacher or Program Director who inquires.  Jen is also available to assist with program development and to lead teacher training either in person or by tele-conference.  She loves to share her experience leading multi-age Sunday School classes and to share how she has successfully engaged children with the curriculum in a classroom or garden setting.  Contact Jen

Jen was moved to write the curriculum when teaching a small group of Kindergarten and first graders (that included her own two children) in a Sunday School class at a Unitarian Universalist church in Los Angeles.  She found that many existing curricula had a top down approach that filled the children with facts and science or were developmentally not aligned with the very youngest children in her care.   Jen wanted to create a curriculum that honors the innocence of childhood, keeps the children’s sense of reverence for nature alive and inspires awe and wonder about the world we live in.  A curriculum that allows them to seek their own spiritual path, that does not victimize young children by bringing adult themes and images to them before they are developmentally ready to process those ideas and that can grow with them. 

With Sophia Lyon Fahs as her inspiration and RIE, Restorative Justice and Waldorf Education as her guides she developed a curriculum that provides truth, beauty and goodness to the young child.  Through experiential and artistic activities the curriculum keeps them engaged in their world as authors of their own book.  The intention Jen has infused into the curriculum and sets for her work with the children is that they will become inquisitive seekers who are part of an equitable, fair and peaceful church community as a model for what is possible in the greater world.

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