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Save These Dates!
September 9 - Rally Sunday & Blessing of the Backpacks
September 23 - Confirmation Sunday
October 7 - Blessing of the Animals @ 6pm in the Sanctuary
October 14 - UMW & Bible Sunday
October 28 - Trunk-or-Treat @ 4pm in the East parking lot
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Last Week (8/12)
The Little Lost Lamb
Next Week (8/26)
Movie Sunday!
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Thank you so much to the families that attended our feedback session! Your feedback will help us create a great camp plan for next year! Here is what we learned:
- First and Foremost, kids who have attended camps have had fun, faith-forming experiences, and are excited to come back next year!
- Half day camps are a challenge for working parents. Full day camps would be preferable.
- Full week or Monday-Thursday camps are preferable to partial week camps.
- Parents appreciate that our camp dates are out by January 1. It helps for planning.
- Our teen volunteers are critical to the success of our camp model, but more adult involvement is needed.
- We need to continue to encourage parents to schedule for camps early. We sometimes run out of proper sizes of t-shirts and other supplies because of late registrations.
If you have additional feedback to share that may help shape our Summer 2019 plans, feel free to email your thoughts to
lynne@haumc.org
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September can feel as much like a New Year as January 1st. On Sunday September 9th, bring your backpacks, diaper bags, briefcases, or anything else that holds your daily belongings as we bless this new school year and give thanks for these things that help to anchor us into some of our much needed daily routines.
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Blessing of the Animals
Mark your calendars for this special service of blessing for our fuzzy friends and fur covered children. We will celebrate all of God's creatures in the Sanctuary on Sunday, October 7th at 6pm.
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MINE! A COUNTING BOOK ABOUT SHARING (GENEROUS BOOKS)
Children's author Caryn Rivadeneira will be reading at Red Balloon Bookshop Saturday at 10:30am. Check out the Facebook event HERE! Her latest "Generous Kids" books teach kids age-appropriate concepts about money, possessions, self-worth, and sharing.
A little over a year ago, Andrew DeYoung, my editor at Beaming Books, came to me with an idea. Would I, he asked, be interested in writing three books, for three age groups around the SAME idea-namely, generosity?
I loved everything about the project: the challenge for me as a writer (could I come up with three different enough stories on the same theme?) and as a parent and a person of faith (what does generosity really look or act like in different age groups?), and the fun I had working with the amazing folks at Beaming Books and Brightpeak Financial.
I'm really proud of how the Generous Kids books, Mine! A Counting Book about Sharing, It's Not Fair! A Book about Having Enough, and The Wrong Shoes: A Book About Money and Self-Esteem turned out. They're fun and engaging-not preachy. Kids love reading them, and teachers, parents, and care-givers will love them as well.
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Check Out Our Summer Highlight Reel!
Thanks to all of our campers who attended our Joyful Uproar music camp, Earth Camp out at Koinonia Retreat Center and finally ROME Vacation Bible Camp! We have had a great time, made new friends, and grown in our faith. Watch our newsletter in the fall for news about our summer camp line up for Summer 2019!
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Sunday, September 9th is Rally Sunday! This is the week that we kick off our new program year by returning to our regular classroom format, meeting our new Sunday School teachers, re-connecting with our familiar ones, and Blessing our Backpacks in worship. We look forward to seeing you then!
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The
Values Project is a year-long initiative designed to equip families to raise children who thrive emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Get inspiration, practical ideas, family activities, and parenting tips from our network of seasoned parents and faith leaders, because it takes a village to raise a good human. Each month we'll explore a different value-like honesty, loyalty, creativity, kindness, compassion, and
patience.
Generous Kids, created in partnership with Beaming Books and Brightpeak Financial, helps families and churches come together around the shared goal of loving others by living generously.
Written by J. Bradley Wigger
The Generous Kids books, written by Caryn Rivadeneira, teach kids age-appropriate concepts about money, possessions, self-worth, and sharing. Generous Kids also offers churches and families the opportunity to participate in 30-day challenges that are designed to help turn generosity into action. To learn more about the challenges, visit https://raisegenerouskids.com
The Generous Kids books release this month, so we sat down with Caryn Rivadeneira to chat about the experience of writing the books-as well as her hopes for how they will impact families and churches.
Q: Briefly describe the theme/plot of each of the three books.
A:
Mine does two things at once, well, three. One, it gives young kids opportunities to count. Two, it introduces readers to several characters with some cool
things (which we get to count!). And three,
Mine shows us that while it's great to have our own
stuff, sharing our things makes a day at the beach (and all of life!) much more fun.
It's Not Fair! flips the idea of "learning to share" on its head. While we like to think we need to teach kids how to share, truth is, lots of kids are great at sharing! They're born generous. The trouble with already-generous kids is what happens when our generosity hits a snag-which is what happens to Roxy when her big-hearted giving means she can no longer afford the Mad Scientist Chemistry Set she's been working and saving for.
The Wrong Shoes uses journal-style entries to follow the adventures of Marco and Amelia as they try to figure out the best ways to earn and save enough money to buy-wait for it-the right shoes! Of course, their learning adventure takes them places and to people they never expected as they learn age-appropriate ways to earn, to save-and to give.
Q: What did you learn from writing the three Generous Kids books?
A: Honestly, writing these served as great reminders of the huge variety of ways we can be generous-and the huge variety of ways we are blessed with abundance. So often we think of being generous as very specific: being willing to give others our money. But generosity is a spirit issue, a willingness to live open-hearted and open-handed, ready to share whatever we've been given, not out of duty but out of love and kindness.
Q: What was the hardest part of writing these books? What was the most enjoyable part?
A: Those are probably one and the same! It was a challenge to come up with age-appropriate ways to introduce concepts of generosity without being overly didactic. So thinking through different angles to generosity was both challenging and super fun.
Q: What sets the Generous Kids books apart from other children's books?
A: They're different in lots of ways! What I love about these three is that they work well together. I love the idea of a family getting the whole collection-either for current kids of different ages or for their kids as they grow. They're also terrific for schools, libraries, faith communities, daycares, and after-school programs to use to foster conversations. Plus, each book has a parent guide in the back to help families have deeper conversations about generosity and contentment.
Q: What do you hope kids (and families) will gain from reading the books?
A: Because I'm a writer, I hope they love the stories! I hope they smile at the syntax and sentences and story lines. And because I write kidlit and can't draw for anything, I hope they appreciate the gorgeous illustrations. Take time to "look around" in the pictures. See what surprises you find! But, of course, I hope kids and parents come away with a deeper understanding of what being generous looks like-and why living as generous people makes this world a better place!
Q: What advice would you give to parents (beyond reading the books) about how to inspire their kids to be generous people?
A: A few things come to mind:
- Generosity is an attitude, a willingness. It's not about exact amounts; it's about how we act.
- We can be generous in many ways: with our time, our toys, our talents, our "treasure," even our troubles! I mean, I love the idea of teaching kids to be generous in telling stories of when they had hard times. It's teaching that we can properly steward EVERYTHING God has given us-even our experiences.
- Praise generosity in your kids whenever you see it. It's easy to harp on kids when we catch them NOT sharing, but when you even see a kid scoot over to make room for a sibling, praise that! It's being generous.
To purchase the Generous Kids books (quantity discounts are available!) visit Here.
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Hennepin Kids for LYFE is on Facebook! Please "Like" us
@hennepinkidsforlyfe for updates on programming,
pictures of our kids,
and
upcoming activities will be shared weekly.
Hennepin Kids for LYFE is also on Instagram! Follow us @hennkids to see photos of our kids and the "joys" we
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Jar every Sunday!
Hennepin Kids for LYFE is also on Pinterest! Follow us
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fun activities, and more!
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