Let it snow!

To use the image of snow to remember how things can get bigger and bigger without us wanting them to.

by Susan Maclean

Suitable for Key Stage 2

Aims

To use the image of snow to remember how things can get bigger and bigger without us wanting them to.

Preparation and materials

• None required.

Assembly

1. I love playing in the snow. I love sledging, throwing snowballs and making snowmen. Does anyone know how to make a snowman? Making a snowman can remind us of what happens when we say or do things that we shouldn’t.
2. For example: if your parents leave you in a room with a big tin of sweets and tell you not to take any of the sweets, what might you do? You might take a sweet, which is disobeying your parents – that’s the first wrong. Then your folks come back in and you have chocolate all over your face, and they ask you ‘Did you take a sweet?’ What might you say? You might tell a lie and say ‘No’. That’s the second thing wrong. So your folks say to you ‘Did you steal that?’ Oh oh, there’s another thing wrong: you were told not to take the sweet, so you have stolen it. So, best thing to do, blame someone else: ‘It was my brother/sister who took it’ – another lie. And so it goes on and on. And it all started from doing one little thing wrong.
3. Just like a snowball – it starts off small and gets bigger and bigger, until it ends up as a big snowman!
4. Snowballs can get us into a lot of trouble, saying and doing all these wrong things. So what can we do about it?
   
   God can get rid of these bad things in us. He wants us to say sorry when we do things wrong. What kind of things should you say sorry for? We should always say sorry, whether it’s to our teachers, parents, friends or brothers and sisters. And if we know we have also hurt God, it’s good to say sorry to God too!
5. God says he can make these things ‘white as snow’ if we really mean it, and other people will also forgive us if we really mean it when we say sorry to them too.
6. So snow can help us to remember:
   – to watch what we say and do, because the little things we say or do wrong can grow into great big snowmen;
   – to say sorry when we say or do something wrong against anyone else.

Time for reflection

Prayer
Thank you God for the good times we can have in snow. Help us when we say and do things that we shouldn’t, and please forgive us when we make mistakes.
Amen.

Song/music

‘Jesus, good above all other’ (Come and Praise, 23)