Explore engaging and free curriculum designed for all ages to grow in faith and learn together.
The Good Gifts Project, Lutheran Social Service
The Good Gifts Project aims to cultivate and amplify the character strengths of gratitude, generosity, and hope in youth. The project is based on the idea that every person has gifts to celebrate, be grateful for, and share with others. Cultivating gratitude for what you have requires taking an account of your gifts and
giving thanks for how these gifts have helped you along the way. Amplifying generosity requires you to examine what others need and how sharing your gifts might help that need. Hope is the product of realizing you have something to share and that you can make a difference in the world. The Good Gifts Project
gives youth the opportunity to practice all three virtues — to cultivate and amplify them — for personal growth and for making a meaningful contribution to the world. Developed by Lutheran Social Service of MN with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation for use in a life-skills class with youth experiencing homelessness and youth aging out of foster care, this curriculum can be adapted for any youth group in any setting.
The Head, Heart and Hands
The Head, Heart and Hands is a comprehensive Sunday School curriculum that centers children, ages six through thirteen, in the Biblical story. Inspired by the pedagogical approach of Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf schools, the stories studied in each grade match the developmental needs of the child in that grade. Stories are grouped in 6-week intervals, with a matching project that takes up to 6 Sunday morning sessions to complete. At the end of the 6 weeks, a presentation Sunday is held to show the accomplishments of the students over that period. The curriculum also involves parents in the storytelling and gives insights into the spiritual growth of the child through a series of parenting pages that match the weekly lessons. While possible projects are suggested, there is considerable freedom within the curriculum for teachers to design their own projects to bring the story to life. In this way, the head, the heart, and the hands are all engaged in learning about the old, old story of God's love for us.