Primary Current Assemblies




EVERYBODY’S WAITING: An Advent Assembly

By Author Unknown
(If you submitted this assembly, please email us at assemblies@spck.org.uk.)

Suitable for Whole School


Aim

To explore the theme of waiting, and relate it to Advent.


Preparation and materials

• Prepare a few children to stand in a line, as if waiting in a queue. Ask them to act out the situation, e.g. looking at their watch, tapping a foot, looking worried, tutting, arms folded, etc.
• Each child should be holding one of the following (or a large picture of): a basket of shopping, a large envelope or parcel, a bus timetable, cutlery, a baby name book, a Bible containing the Old Testament.

1. Invite your children to stand in line at the start of the assembly. After a short while ask the assembly what they think the children are doing.
   
   Explain that they are all waiting in a queue. Say that you also are waiting and that you will join the queue. Pause for a while, look at your watch and ask the child in front of you how long they’ve been waiting. Ask another child in the queue how long they think you’ll have to wait. Invite everyone else to guess what the children in the queue (and yourself) are waiting for.
2. Point out the child with the bus timetable, and explain that they’ve been waiting quite a while for a bus. S/he is getting cold and fed up, but knows that when the bus arrives s/he will be able to get on with her/his journey. S/he has to wait, because if s/he goes away to pass the time, s/he may well miss the bus.
   The child with the shopping is waiting in a checkout queue in a supermarket. Explain how impatient some people get, and how it always seems that you end up in the slowest queue. You never know if the person in front is going to need a price check or have some other query that will slow the queue up.
   The child with the envelope or parcel is waiting in the post office. Explain how sometimes you need to go to the post office in the lunch hour, and it can be quite worrying if the queue is very long and you need to rush back to school. But you stay and wait, because if you don’t post the parcel on time it will not get to someone special in time for Christmas.
   The child with the cutlery is obviously waiting for their dinner. S/he is in a hurry because afterwards s/he needs to get to choir/chess/football/netball (or any appropriate lunch-time activity).
3. The child with the baby name book shouldn’t really be waiting in a queue. Ask the children if anyone knows how long people usually wait for a baby to be born. Go on to say that nine months can seem like a long time, when new parents are waiting for their first baby. Ask the children what sort of things a family might do to prepare for the coming of a new baby (decorating the nursery, buying baby clothes and equipment, choosing possible names, etc.).
4. Go on to say that the final person in the queue, carrying the Old Testament, is also waiting for a baby. Christians believe that this baby had been expected for many years, not just nine months. Explain how the Old Testament contains prophecies about the birth of the Messiah – a special person sent from God. At the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had been waiting for thousands of years for the Messiah, and when Jesus came some people believed that he was the one that the scriptures had described. These people became the first Christians.
5. Finish by explaining that the month of December is called Advent by Christians. It is a time of waiting, waiting for Christmas to come. Many of you will have Advent calendars to help you see how long you have left to wait.
   
   But as well as waiting, it is a time of preparation; a time to get ready for the coming of Jesus. As well as preparing for the practicalities of Christmas, it is also an opportunity to prepare ourselves to be better people, to be closer to God in our hearts and our minds.