UUCARDS - Members Page - Green Timber Publications

Green Timber Publications

available summer 2010

sUUper plays 2 NEW
for holidays and special days
by Richard S. Kimball

Green Timber's sUUper plays really are super, you told us. But could there be more such enjoyable dramas for holidays and other important times? Yes there could, and here they are, fifty of them in the all new sUUper plays 2 for holidays and special days, set for publication in summer, 2010.
The plays are all you have come to expect from UU author Richard S. Kimball. Most are amusing - some of them zany - and a few are more serious. All are meaningful and suited for use as lessons for all ages in multi-generational worship, or in religious education programs as quick performances, discussion starters, and group builders.

Welcome to a world where:

- Christmas Eve sky searchers find the stars of several religions

- A Groundhog Day visit prompts talk of Welcoming Congregations

- Youth share personal prayers at Thanksgiving and peace prayers for Memorial Day

- Five Green Guys explore ways to make UUs more environmentally conscious at Earth Day

- Drips and Drops overcome differences for Water Communion

     Plays average about four minutes, and longer ones can be shortened. All are appropriate for upper elementary and middle school groups, and older youth will enjoy presenting them to younger children. Each play includes lists of characters and props, simple staging instructions, a complete script for easy reproduction and reading, and a supporting leader page with questions to prompt significant discussions after play presentations and suggested other activities.
     Minimal preparations are required for use. Plays can be used immediately or your group can build them into something more by adding scenery, simple costumes, sound effects, and props. The character count ranges from three to fourteen, but actors can play more than one role in larger plays. The book's length is 378 pages, all three-hole punched for easy insertion in a binder.
     The price per book is $90. The price for copies 2 to 4 sent at any time to a single UU community is $80 per copy. For the pricing of copies 5 and beyond, request a multiple copy discount schedule from Green Timber.Media rate shipping for a single copy is $6. Shipping for multiple copies is billed at Green Timber's cost with a small addition for handling. Inquire for priority rates.

sUUper plays
50 Short Dramas for Upper Elementary
and Middle School Groups
in Unitarian Universalist Programs
by Richard S. Kimball

     Here's a brand-new collection of often amusing and always meaningful plays sure to be warmly received and widely used by the religious educators and ministers of Unitarian Universalist communities everywhere. These engaging mini-dramas are wonderful in worship as lessons for all ages, in RE classrooms as quick performances and discussion starters, andin UU retreats and summer programs as workshop activities and talent show acts. They work beautifully for multi-age groups.
     Each play includes lists of characters and props, staging instructions, a complete script for easy reproduction and reading, and a supporting leader page with questions to prompt significant and illuminating discussions after play presentations. Characters are often identified by titles such as 1st UU Kid and 2nd UU Kid without reference to gender. You can make simple nametags so actors and audience will know who is who, or ask actors to use names of their choice - real or assumed.
     Plays can be used immediately, simply, and without fuss - or you can ask your groups to build them into something more by adding scenery, making costumes, creating new props, building in more motion and gestures, including music - whatever you like. Plays require from 2 to 12 minutes to perform. The average length is 7.5 minutes. Cast sizes range from 3 to 9. In small groups, actors can assume more than one part by wearing more than one nametag.
     Play categories include: Unitarian Universalism, UU Principles, Belief, Knowing Oneself, Right and Wrong, Helping, and Special Times and Holidays.
     sUUper plays is everything that UU communities have come to expect from Green Timber. It is spiritual. It is practical. It is deeply meaningful. It is engaging and fun. Really fun. With the purchase of sUUper plays you receive permission to produce scripts for all actors in each play. One book will be sufficient in a pinch for small congregations. But most will want a copy for the minister and another for the director of religious education. In larger congregations, Green Timber suggests having separate copies for the minister, for the director of religious education, and for each group using the plays on a regular basis - say, four or more times a year.
     Included are 50 plays, 50 full-page leader guides, an insightful introduction, and alphabetic and topical indexes. The sUUper plays package comes to you with 458 pages shrink-wrapped and three-hole punched for insertion in your own binder. The price for the first copy is $90. The price for copies 2 to 4 sent at any time to a single UU community is $80. For the pricing of copies 5 and beyond, request a multiple copy discount schedule from Green Timber. Media rate shipping for a single copy is $6. Shipping for multiple copies is billed at Green Timber's cost with a small addition for handling.

Celebrating Rainforests
by Tirrell H. Kimball

     Celebrating Rainforests speaks to the UU 7th principle. Our fragile planet calls us to help children honor and care for it. This program is one answer to the call, and gives children a way to connect to our Earth and be empowered to help make a difference.
     This is not a study of rainforests. Instead it is celebration of this important part of our planet. The children will join together to learn more about and celebrate tropical rainforests through many experiences as they explore rainforest animals, plant life, people, resources, and ways they can help. Included are stories, special songs, discussions, meditation, and a variety of hands-on activities.
     Some experiences are a rainforest tasting party, exploring ways to help the environment and rainforests, making rainforest T-shirts, creating a rainforest, and more. A major part of the program is a special social action project to help preserve rainforests. The program ends with a celebration of words and music.
     Celebrating Rainforests is for ages five through middle school. The ten sessions begin with a gathering of all the participants and then divide into smaller groups. Each session lists activities for younger children and for older children.150 pages, 8½x11, 3-hole punched, $40 for the first copy. Additional copies are $35 each.

The New You the Creator
a new version of an old favorite, now spiritually enhanced and expanded
by Richard S. Kimball

    The New You The Creator is an activity-based program of creative empowerment. Its basic message is expressed in its title: You the participant are, can be, and should be one of the creative forces in the world. This 2006 revision adds rich spiritual elements, nine sessions on Creating Community, and more to the original 1993 version.

    Intended for and highly successful with middle school youth, the original has also been enjoyed and praised by high school youth, adult groups, and occasional fifth and sixth graders.
    Here’s what you get: Fifty sessions, each 75 minutes in length. Every one is packed with creative activities like role-plays, continuums, drawing, photography, sculpting, constructing spaghetti bridges, designing perfect pets, and making gods, goddesses, and more creative people. The theme of spirituality also touches every session. In the opening ritual participants share a moment of silence to think of “creative and spiritual forces flowing through them.” Meditations are frequent. Nonlectures and continuums speak of the spiritual. Activities such as the culminating mandala creation are invested with spiritual meaning and impact. The group designs a church spiritual home.

     Every session begins and ends with spiritual opening and closing rituals. “Session -at-a-Glance” boxes make the package easy to use. Session “Complements” offer additional activities. Old favorites include creating “blind” self-portraits, sculpture gardens, stained glass windows, spaghetti bridges, role-plays on ethics, and Golden Rule raps. New favorites will be a “survival soup” competition, creating and deflating balloon bullies, leading worship for younger kids and their pets, doing an anti-hunger social action project, designing clocks or clock faces, and building a group chalice.
     The New You the Creator can easily be used together with the original version. Approximately 500 pages, 124 reproducible for direct participant use; 3-hole-punched and shrink-wrapped for insertion in your own binder. ISBN 0-944443-14-1, $95 with discounts for more copies

Honoring Our Mother Earth
Experiences in Native American Spirituality
by Tirrell H. Kimball

     Honoring Our Mother Earth was created from a desire to teach young people the need to revere and preserve our Earth and all her living things. It speaks to our Unitarian Universalist 7th principle and the source from which we draw our living tradition – teachings of earth-centered traditions that celebrate the sacred circle of life.
     This revised edition of Honoring Our Mother Earth has twelve sessions, and significant background material about its subject matter to help prevent over- simplification. It remains experiential in approach, using ceremonies and rituals, myths and stories, song and dance, and arts and crafts.
     The sessions include: The Circle of Life, O Great Spirit, In the Beginning, All Things Are Connected, We Are All Related , Sacred Animals, Sacred Lands, Sacred Arts, A Native American Guest, Giving Thanks, Celebrating Native American Arts, and The Ceremony. Leader resources include: Introduction, About the Program, Using the Program, Songs and Poem/Movement, Native American Designs, Book List, Materials List, and Bibliography.
     Honoring Our Mother Earth is for ages five years old to adult. It can be arranged for age-specific classes, elementary, combined elementary and middle school groups, or inter- generational programs. Its birthplace was a church, but its activities will work well in many other organizations such as public and private schools, scout groups, retreats, and camps.
110 pages, 8½x11, spiral bound, ISBN 0-944443-08-7, $30.00

Celebrating Family
by Tirrell H. Kimball

     As family structures have taken varied forms, we need to give children a sense of belonging, a sense that their families are unique and precious, as real as any other. Through stories, games, discussion, special art projects, music, and family activities, this five-week program explores My Family, Kinds of Families, What’s Special about My Family, and What Makes a Family, and concludes with a celebration of all families or an intergenerational worship service. It is suitable for churches, schools, and camps. There is also an annotated list of books on family and family issues. Revised in 2002. 66 pages, 8½x11, plastic bound, ISBN 0-944443-03-6, $15.00

Children’s and Adult Books

A Christmas Wrinkle
By Richard S. Kimball

     On Christmas Eve, ten-year-old Dan tries to reconcile the idea of Christmas magic with the suffering he sees not just in the news but in the bag lady who seems to haunt his family’s back yard. As worry turns to action, Dan sees Christmas in a new light that he himself has caused to shine. Drawings by Ruth C. Osborne add warmth to this holiday doming-of-age story. For youngsters who have reached the age of doubt.
40 pages, 7¾x5¼, perfect bound, ISBN 0-944443-01-X, $4.95

A Funny Feeling
By Richard S. Kimball

     This collection of 41 cleverly illustrated poems explores common feelings and sayings about them for the entertainment and enlightenment of young and old alike. The book’s considerable humor helps readers of all ages to explore their own funny feelings and opens the way for discussion with parents, teachers, counselors, church groups and friends. Illustrated by William Reed.
62 pages, 9x6, perfect bound, ISBN 0944443-00-1, $7.95

The Winds of Creativity:
finding fulfillment through creative act
by Richard S. Kimball

     Discover and nurture your creativity. Move with the spiritual winds of creativity that call and touch us all. Start with a doodle if you like, or another of the many enjoyable challenges in this book. Or start with the core message of Winds, a lyrical melding of the divine and the practical, the personal and the cosmic. And end with a new beginning, a deep and convincing sense of your own creative powers. Chapter topics include oomph and angst, self as critic, creation as the interplay of opposites, sex, dreams, masks, nonsense, clocks and more. Each chapter is an essay paired with a poem, photo, or other creation from the author, and ends with seven specific ideas for creative act from the reader.
267 pages, 6x7, perfect bound, ISBN 0-944443-07-9, $16.00

Green Timber Publications announces...

The Shelter Rock curriculum series
In 1998 religious educators of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset, New York, commissioned Tirrell H. Kimball and Richard S. Kimball to create new faith-based curricula rich in spirituality and appealing activity. The result: four original and exciting classroom units plus a

four new curricula
and a supporting
handbook for liberal
religious education
programs

supporting handbook which together fonn a vital part of the Shelter Rock program. So vital that Shelter Rock is making them available to other churches.

The publisher is Green Timber Publications, operated by the Kimballs and long a source of independent favorites like You the Creator, Celebrating Family, Honoring Our Mother Earth, and Caring for Our Planet Earth.

Formally known as Sheltering Spirit: The Shelter Rock Faith Curriculum, the new programs are based in the four theme-strands of Church, World, Self, and Mystery. Each has at least 24 sessions that can be used as is or modified as you like. Each was written for a specific grade level but can be used beyond in whole or in part. And each is accompanied by a page or two of ideas on adapting the occasional ideas specific to Shelter Rock.

The Questing Year

Written for 6^th graders; suitable for individual grades 6 through 8 and for combined groups with 5^th graders and up. The Questing Year engages participants in four quests designed to help them seek and develop their own answers to deep life questions about human faith and the web of all existence. Connected through social action and spiritual search, the Mystery Quest, the Inner Quest, the Action Quest and the UU Quest are all challenging and fun. The class uses music and meditation to experience religious mystery, creates personal aliens and mirror boards for exploring self, runs a social action project to help others outside the church, and explores the lives of outstanding Unitarian Universalists through a reproducible booklet included in the basic text. Twenty-four 75-minute sessions, plastic-wrapped and 3-hole punched for insertion in your own binder; 298 pages (107 reproducible); ISBN 0-944443-13-3; $90.00

Bibleodeon

Written for 5^th graders; suitable for individual grades 5 and 6 and for combined groups with 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th graders. Bibleodeon introduces Hebrew and Christian scriptures by presenting the best-known Hebrew and Christian stories with such props as the Bibleodeon microphone and such interactive challenges as investigating the Cain-Abel crime scene. Participants act in 11 amusing playlets with characters like the Fatted Calf, illustrate a time line, keep doodle books, give awards to outstanding biblical women, and more. They explore connections between biblical events and Unitarian Universalist principles, between biblical ideas and their own lives. They experience the Bible as one of many wonderful UU sources. They have fun, and they keep coming back. Twenty- four 90-minute sessions, plastic-wrapped and 3-hole punchedfor insertion in your own binder; 370 pages (91 reproducible); ISBN 0-944443-12-5; $90.00

Sheltering Spirit... is faith-based * strengthens UU identity * evokes spirituality * is activity-centered and teacher-friendly * respects different learning styles * includes ritual chalice lightings and closings * offers meditative moments * stresses UU principles and sources * involves arts * action and creation * provides resource lists, session overviews, specific presentation plans * builds friendly, active groups * is fun for both kids and their leaders

Free to Believe

Written for 2^nd graders; suitable for individual grades 2 and 3 and for combined groups of l^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders. Free to Believe explores Unitarian Universalist principles and sources while nurturing the emotional, social, and spiritual life of children. Its first sessions focus on UU principles, values, and beliefs through hands-on activities, stories, games, songs and discussions. Children address the conflicts they often face, and create an accepting classroom community. Later sessions focus on life's big questions (about God, death, the creation of life) through the lens of UU sources. Twenty-four 75-minute sessions, plastic-wrapped and 3-hole punched for insertion in your own binder; ISBN 0-944443-11-7; 236 pages (42 reproducible); $70.00

A Discovering Year

Written for kindergarten; suitable for individual grades K and 1 and for combined groups of 4, 5, and 6-year-olds. A Discovering Year nurtures children's spiritual and religious growth through connections to their ever-widening environment. They explore selves, friendships, families, church, nature, and religious and cultural days. Through ritual, sharing times, quiet times, crafts, activities, singing and music, games and movement, stories and talks, they learn to appreciate the worth of each person, to work and play cooperatively, to express feelings, to celebrate human diversity, and to feel part of their UU community. Twenty-five 75-minute sessions, plastic-wrapped and 3-hole punched for insertion in your own binder; ISBN 0-944443-10-9 ; 222 pages (22 reproducible); $70.00

Sheltering Spirit Handbook

Written for all religious education leaders and teachers. Sheltering Spirit Handbook supports Sheltering Spirit curricula, traces the faith development of children, offers notes on classroom atmosphere, contains a rich collection of chalice lighting words and other spiritual elements organized by grade level. Plastic-wrapped and 3-hole punched for insertion in your own binder; ISBN 0-94444-09-5; 88 pages; $25.00

About Green Timber Publications
Green Timber is a small press in Portland, Maine, owned by Tirrell Kimball, former director of religious education in a Unitarian Universalist Church, and her husband, Richard, an author and editor. Their curricula listed were originally prepared for Unitarian Universalist use. But they are also either suited for or easily adapted for use in countless other organizations. The only requirement for institutions using these materials is that the institutions encourage independent thought by young and old alike.

Green Timber Publications, P.O. Box 3884, Portland, ME 04104-3884,
(207) 926-3146, rkimbal4@maine.rr.com

ORDER FORM Send to: Green Timbers Publications, PO Box 3884, Portland Maine04104-3884
Or call (207) 926-3146 or e-mail rkimbal4@maine.rr.com

#	Title	Price
____	sUUper plays 2	$90.00 ______
____	sUUper plays	$90.00 ______
____	Celebrating Rainforests	$40.00 ______
____	The New You the Creator	$95.00 ______
____	Honoring Our Mother Earth	$30.00 ______
____	Celebrating Family	$15.00 ______
____	A Funny Feeling	$7.95 ______
____	A Christmas Wrinkle	$4.95 ______
____	The Winds of Creativity	$16.00 ______
_____	The Questing Year	$90.00 ______
_____	Bibleodean	$90.00 ______
_____	Free to Believe	$70.00 ______
_____	A Discovering Year	$70.00 ______
_____	Handbook	$25.00 ______
_____	Set A: all 4 curricula	$300.00 ______
_____	Set B: all 5 books	$320.00 ______
Shipping and Handling		____________
TOTAL		____________

USPS media rate shipping/handling:
$6 for The New You the Creator, sUUper plays, and sUUper plays 2 (inquire for multiple copy discounts)
$5 each for The Questing Year and Bibleodeon;
$4 each for Free to Believe and A Discovering Year;
$3 each for Sheltering Spirit Handbook;
$9 for Set A;
$10 for Set B;
All other books: $4 for the first book, $2 for each additional book.
Inquire for priority mail rates.

Name _____________________________________ Title _________________
Church _________________________________________________________
Address _________________________________________ Church?___Home?___
City _______________________________ State __________ Zip______________

Checks and money orders are fine. Or we
can bill your church. Sorry, no credit cards.

Please inquire for multiple copy discounts.