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All about me

by Janice Ross

Suitable for Key Stage 1

Aims

To encourage children to identify aspects of our own individuality and value others as different and equal.

Preparation and materials

  • You will need a large recipe book. Choose a recipe for a simple dish to read out during the assembly.
  • Devise two ‘recipes’ for making school characters and write these up on a whiteboard. Choose two easily identifiable school characters for this purpose, such as the school janitor/caretaker and a teaching assistant or first aider (see below for examples).
  • Find out how many children there are in your school.

Assembly

  1. Pretend to be reading through the recipe book and tell the children that you are trying to find something a little bit different for tea tonight.

    Read out a recipe for a simple dish – the ingredients and method. What do they think?

    Ask for suggestions as to a nice meal you might make. Ask for a show of hands as to who would choose each suggestion.

    Identify that some of us like the same food, others like different food, but we all enjoy a nice meal.

  2. Explain that you have an unusual recipe to share with them – a recipe for a person. Then show the first description on the whiteboard.

    Ingredients
    50 g energy
    50 g laughter
    25 g mischief
    1 tablespoon sternness
    Dash of perseverance

    Method
    Hand a mixture of tools and give him/her a problem to solve. 
    Call on her/him when in trouble. 
    Remember that he/she likes you to smile and say ‘Goodbye’ at the end of the day.

    Ask the children to guess who this is.

  3. Show the second description on the whiteboard.

    Ingredients
    150 g care
    50 g compassion
    25 g good listening
    3 tablespoons encouragement
    A sprinkling of toughness

    Method
    Put in a warm and secure place. 
    Provide with time to listen and care for those who are hurting. 

    Ask the children to guess who this is.

  4. Tell the children that these recipes are about people in the school. Ask them if they know how many people there are in the school community.

    The recipe for each of those people would be different. Some might include a dash of stubbornness or a lot of common sense or a little bit of studiousness or sprinkles of courage or helpfulness. Some of us might have some measures of the same qualities, some might have very different ingredients.

    What is so wonderful is that we are all equally important. We each bring our own flavours to the school community. We are each growing into special, unique people. The job of the school is to nurture everyone with love and care so that we all reach our potential.

Time for reflection

Ask the children to think about what the recipe for each of them would include.

Perhaps back in class the children could write individual recipes for themselves and others and they could guess who is being described from each other’s lists. It might also be useful for the teacher to ask the children to write a recipe for him or her. 

Prayer
Dear Lord,
Thank you that you made each one of us and we are all different. 
Thank you that we are all equally important to you and in our school. 
Help us to value one another. 
Amen.

Song/music

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

Publication date: January 2014   (Vol.16 No.1)    Published by SPCK, London, UK.
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