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Respect

To retell the creation story and help understanding that everyone and everything deserves respect

by Claire Wren

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To re-tell the Creation story and help understanding that everything and everyone deserves our respect.

Preparation and materials

  • You will need a child-friendly version of Genesis 1.1-2.1.
  • Suitable props to illustrate the story, e.g. torch for light, a pale blue sheet for the sky, a dark blue sheet for the sea, cardboard cut-out stars, plants, toy animals.
  • 3 jam jars with lids, half full of warm water.
  • A packet of Smarties.
  • A dark coloured piece of paper.

Assembly

  1. Explain that you are going to tell the story from the Bible of when God created the world. Ask for six volunteers. Explain that this is the very first story in the Bible and you are going to read it while your helpers show some of the things God made.

    Read the Creation story and help the children to hold up their part of creation.

  2. Explain how, in the story, God was pleased with what he had made. He had respect for the good work he had done. It is good for us, too, to respect ourselves and the work that we do.

    Let the children go back to their places.

  3. Explain that the story says that God asked the first people on Earth to look after the Earth and respect it. Who can think of some ways that we can respect the place where we live? (e.g. don't drop litter, look after our pets, turn off lights to save energy).

  4. But what about other people? Sometimes it can be hard to respect other people because they can seem so different from us.

    Who has ever seen Blind Date? This is the kind of question they ask on the programme - if you were a Smartie, what colour would you be and why?

    Get some answers and bring three children to the front. Ask each of them: What's your name and where do you come from? Explain that each person looks different, likes different things; all of us are different colour Smarties. But what about on the inside?

  5. Ask the children to put their chosen colour Smartie into a jar of warm water and shake. (The Smarties should go white.) Then ask them to fish out their Smartie and put them on a piece of dark paper so that everyone can see they have turned white.

    This might help to illustrate that underneath, we are all the same. We all have the same feelings: happy, sad, angry, excited.

    The first story in the Bible tells that God made people in his own image. If we can understand that however different people may seem from us, underneath they are really quite similar to us, then that will help us to respect them. Ways of respecting people can include: being kind to others in the playground; sharing equipment during lessons; being friendly to people even if we don't think they have much in common with them.

    Let the volunteers go back to their places.

Time for reflection

Let's close our eyes now and think about respect - for ourselves, for the place where we live and for one another. Consider how we can show respect today.

OR

Dear God,
We thank you for the story of creation,
which teaches us about respect.
Help us to respect our own work,
to respect our world
and to respect other people
even if they seem very different from us.
Amen.

Song/music

'In Christ there is no east or west' (Come and Praise, 66).

Publication date: June 2004   (Vol.6 No.6)    Published by SPCK, London, UK.
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