Primary Current Assemblies



OATS AND BEANS AND BARLEY

A harvest assembly

By Ronni Lamont

Suitable for Key Stage 1

Aim

To think about how our food grows, seemingly with little help from us.



Preparation and materials

• You can download the lyrics and the actions for the song ‘Oats, peas, beans and barley grow’ from http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/o001.html.
• You might like to make a display of the food in the song.
• You will also need some oats (with stalks if possible), porridge oats, some flapjack, some dry beans, some broad/runner/stick beans (if possible), some baked beans in a can and a bottle of barley water.
• You could teach the song at song practice prior to the assembly.

Assembly

1. Play the song as the children enter the assembly hall.
   
   Ask the children, who has porridge or Ready Brek for breakfast? Or likes to eat flapjack? Does anyone know what these are made from? – Oats.
   
   Show the children what the grown oats look like, as well as porridge-type oats.
   
   And who likes beans? Have a tin of beans ready, and also some dry beans. You might like to also show the children some broad beans in their pods, and pod the beans to show them how beans grow.
   
   Show the barley water. You may need to explain what it is. They may have seen tennis players drinking it, say at Wimbledon (if they watch tennis).
   
2. Can anyone tell me how you grow these things? – Plant seeds.
   
   Would someone like to tell me how you plant a seed? Have you done this at home? – You make a hole in the soil, pop in the seed and then cover it up.
   
   How do farmers plant seeds? Do they do it like that? – They use a tractor to pull along a seed planter.
   
   Explain that when the farmers are planting, you often see lots of birds following the tractor to eat any seed that they can!
   
3. Now ask if anyone can explain how the seed grows? It needs water, and food from the soil. The baby plant is inside the seed, and it grows to form a plant. But we really don’t know how it all happens.
   
4. Say that we’re going to sing a song that tells the story of planting and growing seeds. Teach the song to the school, and then show them the actions. Keep them sitting down for this part.
   
   Once you’ve gone through it, get the whole school up, and sing the song with everyone being the farmer, etc. If your school is too large, perhaps give a verse to each year, rotating it through the school.

Time for reflection

Reflection

Can you or I or anyone know
How oats, and beans, and barley grow?

Prayer

Lord God,

We thank you for all our food.

For farmers,

who plant the seed,

encourage it to grow,

and then harvest our food.

Today we say thank you for all the people, right across the world,

who grow our food.

Amen.