Eurovision
All together now!
by Becky May
Suitable for Whole School (Pri)
Aims
To explain the story of the Eurovision Song Contest and how this well-known competition can bring us all together.
Preparation and materials
- Prepare some songs to play as the children arrive for the assembly.
- Gather together some European flags to display, or images of flags to project on the screen.
Assembly
- As the children arrive for the assembly, play some recordings of well-known Eurovision contest songs (which can be found online), and display the various flags, if you are able to project them.
- Good morning, I wonder if any of you recognized any of those songs? I wonder which one was your favourite? Do you have any idea why we might have been listening to them this morning?
(Invite the children to share their ideas.)
This month, we celebrate a competition called the Eurovision Song Contest. I wonder if any of you have heard of that before?
(Invite the children to briefly share what they know about the contest.) - The Eurovision Song Contest is a competition which all countries in and around Europe can enter, by presenting just one song. All the countries involved in the competition can vote for their favourite and the country which scores the most points is the winner!
This year, the Eurovision Song Contest celebrates its fiftieth anniversary! (This is a very long time for a competition like this!) The competition was first launched as a fun way of bringing the countries of Europe back together again after the Second World War. Of course, it is a competition, so countries try to beat each other with a better song than the others, but it really is fun, celebrating music, dancing and performance, and there are no real enemies. - Nowadays, lots of people celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest with parties, perhaps dressing up in fancy dress, eating food from the different countries and voting for the song which they think is the best. There are usually some very unusual, and sometimes even silly, entries in the competition!
The contest usually goes on long into the night, but perhaps your parents will let you stay up for a little while to see some of it, and I wonder if you'll be able to predict the winning song?
Time for reflection
Let us make ourselves really quiet and think for a moment. The Eurovision Song Contest is a fun competition, but it began with an important idea: that we should celebrate the peace that we enjoy. Peace is precious, and so is unity, where countries come together to celebrate their differences but also to enjoy being all together.
Unity is important for us too. Each of us is an individual with our own different skills, hopes and preferences. We belong to different classes within our school, but together we all make our own big school community.
I hope that you can enjoy the contest; laugh at the acts that are funny, and sing along with the catchy tunes. And as you watch the show, remember how it all began; a celebration of being together in peace and unity.
Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you for music and for fun, and thank you for peace and for unity.
As we enjoy this fun competition, help us to remember that we can all work together to make our own community a place of fun, laughter and peace.
Amen.
Song/music
Play the UK entry as the children leave.
‘Let there be peace on earth’ (Sy Miller and Jill Jackson)
