There's no one quite like you!

To help children to value their uniqueness.

by The Revd Sophie Jelley

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To help children to value their uniqueness.

Preparation and materials

• A long roll of white paper (back of wallpaper will do as long as it’s not pre-adhesive).

• Big marker pen.
• The Bible passage in ‘Time for reflection’ is Psalm 139.13–16 (New Revised Standard Version).

Assembly

1. Have you ever wondered if there is someone else in the world like you? Let’s find out during our time together today. First some questions (these depend on your situation but you could say):
   
   –  hands up if you are a boy
   –  hands up if you are a girl
   –  hands up if you have dark hair
   –  hands up if you have blue eyes
   –  hands up if you walked to school today (and so on).
   
   Well, there seem to be quite a lot of ways in which you are the same.
2. I wonder whether anyone is the same shape and size as anyone else. (Get out your wallpaper. Choose a volunteer and draw around your volunteer. Get volunteers to try the outline for size until you find someone who fits inside it.)
   
   So there are people who are the same size.
3. Names – put your hand up if someone in your class has the same first name as you.
   
   (Choose one or two of the children, and ask them to say their names so everyone can hear.) Put your hand up if this is your name as well.
4. The incredible thing is that even though there are people who are the same size, or have the same colour eyes, or the same name – there isn’t anyone in the whole wide world who is the same as you.
   
   Give me a thumbs up! Have a look at your thumb. There is no one in the world with the same thumbprint as you. You are special. You are the only one like you that there is!

Time for reflection

Christians believe that God made every single person.

(Light a candle and read part of Psalm 139.)

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.

Prayer
Help us to know every day that we are special.
Thank you for making me, me.
Amen.

Song/music

‘There are hundreds of sparrows’ (Come and Praise, 15)