Grade 6
Identify basic rights that all people including children, should have: life, family, shelter, food, etc. Ask the young people to identify responsibilities they have that accompany these rights.
A worker’s wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due.
Romans 4:4
Have participants select one school day during the coming week to keep track of items that make up their own lunch. Have them list the items and how each could be reused or recycled (e.g., reuse lunch bag, take home apple core for composting, recycle juice/milk box, plastic, paper). During follow-up discussion, find out how many actually did reuse or recycle their lunch items. Discuss the experience.
Discuss the immigrant experience of the Holy Family as they fled Bethlehem for Egypt to live among strangers until it was safe to return to their homeland. Compare their experience with that of a refugee family from another country fleeing to the United States to seek asylum. Have participants role-play the two experiences, or share their reflections through a poem or in a drawing.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick reminds us:
As the Church continually states in her teachings on stewardship, we have an obligation to respect and care for God’s creation. There is, fortunately, a growing awareness that we need to make greater efforts to conserve our natural resources, recycle what we can, and be less wasteful in general. God calls us to be good stewards of every gift has has given us. Stewardship involves governments, corporations, communities, families, and individuals.
Our Church teaches that we are one human family. As children of God, we are brothers and sisters called to be responsible for one another. Loving our brothers and sisters throughout the world requires that we work for peace and justice.