Food glorious food! A Harvest celebration

To tie in with the theme of ‘Harvest’ and to encourage the children to understand how much food they have compared with other children in the world.

by Rebecca Parkinson

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To tie in with the theme of ‘Harvest’ and to encourage the children to understand how much food they have compared with other children in the world.

Preparation and materials

• Video clip of ‘Food Glorious Food’ from the film Oliver!:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEQDllvuy1I (Make sure you check the copyright.)

• Map outline of the continents of the world.
  Blank world map: www.mapsofworld.com/world-maps/blank-world-map.html
  Map showing continents clearly:
  http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-continent-map.htm
• The names of the continents on pieces of card:
  Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.
• Population numbers (in millions) on pieces of card:
  3674, 778, 342, 483, 342, 31, 0
• 50 small sweets.

Assembly

1. Ask the children to name some of their favourite foods. Show them the video clip from the musical Oliver!
2. Ask the children to tell you about times that they have felt hungry. When were those times? How did they feel? What stopped them feeling like that?
3. Show the children the map of different continents and ask them to name them. Or use the ‘named’ map link above to teach them the continents.
4. Ask the children to come forward and place the names of the continents in order, starting with the continent that they think will have the biggest population. Discuss what the children suggest and then place the cards in the correct order as shown below.
   

   The population of each continent

   Continent	Population
   Asia	3,674,000,000 people
   Africa	778,000,000 people
   Europe	342,000,000 people
   North America	483,000,000 people
   South America	342,000,000 people
   Australia and Oceania	31,000,000 people
   Antarctica	0 people

5. You are going to show the children visually that the two continents that have the largest populations are the two continents that have the smallest amount of food available to them. The children are going to stand up to represent the numbers of population in each continent. A very rough estimate would be one child for every 100,000,000 (hundred million) population, so:

   Asia = 36 children – (one class?)
   Africa = 8 children
   Europe = 3 children
   North America = 5 children
   South America = 3 children
   Australia + Oceania = 1 child
   Antarctica = 0 (explain).

6. Ask the children to group together and hold up the card with the continent they represent on it.
   

   Now show the children the 50 sweets and explain that you are going to share the sweets out to show how much of the world’s food each continent receives. Ask them to imagine that each sweet represents a good-sized meal. Give:

   North America (5 children) – 25 sweets
   Europe (3 children) – 12 sweets
   Australia + Oceania (1 child) – 4 sweets
   South America (3 children) – 4 sweets
   Africa (8 children) – 2 sweets
   Asia (36 children = one class?) – 3 sweets

7. Ask the children how they would divide the food up in each country.
   

   Help the children see that the countries with the largest populations are the countries that eat the least amount of the world’s food. This means that while we are often full up, much of the world goes to bed hungry.

8. Explain to the children that experts tell us that the world produces easily enough food to feed everyone in the world. It is the way the food is shared out that is the problem.
9. You may like to use this assembly as a lead in to some kind of event to help children who are hungry or simply to ask the children to decide to try and help such children at some point in their lives.

Time for reflection

Close your eyes for a moment and think about a time when you were hungry. Now think of the children in the world who often feel like that. How could we help them?

Prayer

Dear God,

Thank you for all the lovely food we eat day after day.

Thank you that we don’t often feel very hungry

and that when we are hungry we quickly get something to eat.

Please help children who are hungry today.

Please help the leaders in countries all over the world to work hard

so that people get enough to eat.

Amen.

Song/music

‘When I needed a neighbour’ (Come and Praise, 65)