Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends

Children

Holiday Family Meetup and MSF Overnight!

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Calling all PYM families!  Please join us on December 12th from 3 to 6 PM at Central Philadelphia Friends Meeting for the opportunity to gather and get to know other children and families from around PYM.  There will be an intergenerational activity, time for parent/guardian worship sharing, children’s activities, and dinner as a community. Families are invited to bring a snack/side dish/dessert to share. All ages are welcome, along with grandparents!  This will be a holiday-themed event, with activities, crafts, and holiday treats.

**There will also be an option for a Middle School Friends Overnight directly following the meetup!

 

SAVE THE DATE!

More information and registration coming soon!

 

Questions?  Contact Kristin Simmons, Youth Engagement Coordinator: ksimmons@pym.org

PYM Family Day at Camp Dark Waters!

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Families are welcome to join us for a day-long Family Meetup at Camp Dark Waters in Medford New Jersey!

All families with children in grades 8 and younger are invited to Camp Dark Waters on October 10th from 10 AM to 4 PM for a day of activities, conversation, and family fun!  Grandparents are also welcome to join us with their grandchildren.

 

SAVE THE DATE!

More information and registration coming soon!

 

Questions? Contact Kristin Simmons, Youth Engagement Coordinator:  ksimmons@pym.org

Friends Experiment: Children’s Religious Education

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When Friends come together, great things happen.

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is launching a new program called the Friends Experiment. During virtual gatherings spread across June, Friends will come together to discuss topics important to their meetings and share their challenges and successes, with the goal of learning from each other and collectively building a thriving yearly meeting.

After completing each “experiment,” we hope to learn and share the best ways Friends are addressing these topics with the wider body and potentially organize more gatherings like these in the future!

These gatherings are free and open to all PYM Friends, so please consider registering for any or all of the dates and topics below.

  • Children’s Religious Education – June 14, 2026 @ 7 pm

Join Friends from across the yearly meeting and PYM’s Youth Engagement Coordinator, Kristin Simmons, for a conversation about children’s religious education and ways to create intergenerational and family-friendly meetings. We will share suggestions for curricula and programming, and brainstorm ways to engage youth and families in new ways. In addition, we will consider ways to collaborate at the quarter and yearly meeting levels.  

All are welcome – parents, First Day School teachers, and anyone who is interested in sharing ideas about children’s religious education!

  • Finance & Property – June 15, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
  • Pastoral Care – June 17, 2026 @ 1:00 pm
  • Spiritual Action – June 22, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
  • Adult Religious Education – June 18, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
  • Event Planning and Event Promotion – June 25, 2026 @ 5:30 pm

There are so many roles we can play as members one of another, so we hope that you will learn and grow alongside PYM Friends into a role that empowers you to lift up and support your faith community.

Please contact PYM at communications@pym.org with any questions.

Register!

Holiday Family Meetup and MSF Overnight!

Written on:

Calling all PYM families!  Please join us on December 13th from 3 to 6 PM at Woodbury Friends Meeting for the opportunity to gather and get to know other children and families from around PYM.  There will be an intergenerational activity, time for parent/guardian worship sharing, children’s activities, and dinner as a community. Families are invited to bring a snack/side dish/dessert to share. All ages are welcome, along with grandparents!

**This will be a holiday-themed event, with activities, crafts, and holiday treats.  There will also be an option for a Middle School Friends Overnight directly following the meetup!

 

Register here!

 

*Questions?  Contact Kristin Simmons, Youth Engagement Coordinator: ksimmons@pym.org

Playing in the Light: Godly Play/Faith & Play Training for Friends

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This experiential approach to religious education can transform your program for children and nurture intergenerational spiritual community. Learn and practice a method of storytelling grounded in deep respect for children, wonder, and play, using stories from the Bible and Quaker faith and practice. Explore how to build spiritual community in a children’s religious education program and intergenerational worship.

Discussions include:

• nurturing the spirituality of children
• exploring the “unspoken” lessons of spaces and methodology
• supporting children and families in the meeting community
• working with multiage groups and diverse needs
• weaving Godly Play/Faith & Play stories into a children’s program with other religious education resources available to Friends.

Cropwell Hosts Halloween Family Outreach Event Again

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This Sunday, Cropwell Friends Meeting, a Quaker community in Marlton and Cherry Hill, N.J., hosted a Halloween party from 1:30-3:00 p.m. Around 45 neighbors visited and enjoyed pumpkin decorating, games, snacks, a truck-or-treat, and tours of the meetinghouse.

[Read more…] about Cropwell Hosts Halloween Family Outreach Event Again

Ways to Connect Before Sessions

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Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has multiple October events that will provide ways to engage within our community before Fall Continuing Sessions. Three opportunities include fellowship of the thread gathering, a family-centered peace-building event, or the collective discernment over climate during a virtual threshing session. Each of these events offers a unique opportunity to engage with the PYM community and prepare ourselves spiritually for the work ahead. Whether you are seeking fellowship, family engagement, or discernment on critical issues, these events will help ground us as we come together as a faith community:

[Read more…] about Ways to Connect Before Sessions

Talking about the Election with Children and Youth

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Authorship is credited to Melinda Wenner Bradley (West Chester Meeting), Quaker Religious Education Collaborative 

The intensity of the election cycle is an experience both for adults and for the children and youth in our families and communities. Depending on their age, preschoolers to teens may be aware of the anxiety in the adults around them — and experiencing their own anxiety about the outcome of the election in November.

[Read more…] about Talking about the Election with Children and Youth

Friends Counseling Service: Key Questions Answered for Accessible Mental Health Care

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The Friends Counseling Service (FCS) serves members and attenders of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) who are in search for guidance, comfort, and assistance. This service offers accessible mental health care to Friends across PYM with counselors providing individual therapy, couples counseling, and family therapy sessions. We connected with Janaki Spickard Keeler, Friends Counseling Service Coordinator, who provided additional insight into the service by answering some key questions.

[Read more…] about Friends Counseling Service: Key Questions Answered for Accessible Mental Health Care

Supporting Children and Teens After Violence in the News

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How do we talk to children and adolescents about gun violence and senseless tragedy? Parents and caregivers are helping their children process their feelings alongside their own, and signs of anxiety are different in children and adolescents when compared with adults. Pastoral care for children begins with pastoral care for their caregivers, and the resources below are offered to support parents and caregivers, educators, and Friends who care for and work with youth. A concern about election violence led to the creation of this event in October for families — Peace Begins with You: A Gathering for Children & Families — and we hope you will share this community gathering and the resources below with your meeting.

Processing in Developmentally Appropriate Ways

Children and teens will have different exposure to and understanding of violent incidents, and may feel anxiety, confusion, fear, sadness, or anger, and have questions about what they see and hear in the media and from friends. Children cannot always articulate their feelings, and they may show us how they are feeling through play or behaviors. Their anxiety may show up as: anger, negativity, difficulty sleeping (particularly falling asleep), defiance, and lack of focus. For adolescent youth, symptoms of anxiety may include recurring fears and worries about routine parts of everyday life, irritability, trouble concentrating, withdrawal, and complaints about stomachaches or headaches.

* Some practical advice for parents and caregivers

  • Parents and adults need to first deal with and assess their own responses to crisis and stress.
  • In PYM, adults seeking support can reach out to the Friends Counseling Service.
  • Try and keep routines as normal as possible. Children gain security from the predictability of routine, including attending school.
  • Be present. Listen to your children’s fears and concerns.
  • Depending on their age, limit exposure to television and the news but be honest with kids and share with them as much information as they are developmentally able to handle with simple, honest answers.
  • Reassure kids that the world is a good place to be (individuals are responsible for violent actions).
  • Reaffirm attachments and relationships.

Resources for Adults Supporting Children and Teens

Making Faithful Practices Available

Children need us to hear their concerns, and we can provide reassurance even if we do not have answers. Lifting up our worry and anxiety in prayer is another way to acknowledge those feelings and place them in the care of our Quaker faith. These coloring pages “Prayers For When You Feel Anxious” includes both suggested prayers and three different sets of images for mindful coloring. This lesson plan about meeting for worship suggests that our worship as Friends is a container that is strong enough to hold big feelings —even hard ones—and the lesson could be adapted to help process recent events and heavy hearts, alongside encouragement to continue finding the Light in our world. 

Election Violence Prevention: Youth Programs

The guidance below for “Youth Programming” comes from Friend Emily Provance (a traveling minister from New York Yearly Meeting) and the Election Violence Prevention series she has created.
Featured strategy: Youth Programming
What the strategy means: There are three ways to approach this strategy: (1) encouraging teens and young adults to engage in the political process nonviolently, (2) empowering teens and young adults as leaders in the nonviolent movement, and (3) holding peaceful social events for teens and young adults during “flashpoint” moments, such as the day of an election or inauguration. How this strategy prevents election violence: Young adults and teens are often perpetrators of election violence, but this is often because older people have intentionally encouraged them to be violent. Empowering youth to take and even lead nonviolent actions means that they are much less likely to be convinced that violence is their best avenue for change.
Action Steps: 
These are things that you can do to enact or promote election monitoring and mapping. Which one sounds like a good match for young people you know, and for you?
  • For shepherd people (gifted in leading or organizing groups): Create or visit a youth forum, small or large, of teens and young adults. Support them in learning about and actively practicing nonviolent strategies for the political changes that they want to see.
  • For relationship people (folks who are good at conversations and making friends): Ask some young people for their thoughts about the upcoming election cycle. Engage in conversation. What do they believe is likely to happen? How does that feel? Do they have concerns? Do they have ideas for action?
  • For word people (talented writers and/or speakers): See if you can find a high school or university class or club to which you can speak about the election cycle and ways to engage in political change nonviolently.
  • For prayer people (spiritual grounded intercessors): Pray for young people in particular throughout the election cycle. When the opportunity arises, invite young people you know to pray actively for nonviolence.
  • For motion people (naturally physically active doers): Consider holding a sports tournament on a Saturday or several weekends in a row. During breaks and over snacks, talk about the election cycle and the influence young people can have on nonviolence in their communities.
  • For learning people (research ninjas and data analyzers): Find out what, if anything, your local schools are teaching in terms of voter and civic education.
  • For creative people (artists, musicians, performers, and crafters): Find an opportunity to hold a creative workshop of some sort for young people, either by organizing a group or by being a guest artist for an existing group. Use election violence prevention as your theme.

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