A harvest rainbow

by Alan M. Barker

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To celebrate the different colours, shapes and tastes of harvest fruits.

Preparation and materials

• You will need a variety of fruits, reflecting the colours of the rainbow, such as:
  – for red – bowl of strawberries and a red apple
  – for orange – satsumas or clementines and a larger orange
  – for yellow – honeydew melon, a banana and a lemon
  – for green – large green cooking apple and Granny Smith apples, perhaps a kiwi fruit
  – for blue or Indigo – blueberries on a blue dish
  – for purple – black grapes and dark plums.
• You will also need a table of suitable height for display, covered with a blue cloth.
• Create an image with the words ‘A Harvest Rainbow’ and a photograph or drawing of a rainbow on it, plus the text of Genesis 8.22, if required, and have the means available to display it during the assembly.
• 

  Harvest Rainbow (2014)

  This Powerpoint presentation can be downloaded and used as part of the assembly.

Assembly

1. Introduce the assembly by saying that you have brought a rainbow to add to the harvest display. It’s not the kind of rainbow you might see in the sky, but one that has the same variety of colours. This rainbow is very special because, unlike real rainbows, you can touch and even taste it! It’s a harvest rainbow.
   
   
2. Ask the children to help make the rainbow appear. Explain that the first colour of a rainbow is red. Invite them to identify some red fruit and begin to create the display on the table by asking the children to place some strawberries together with the red apple on the blue cloth, at the bottom left corner. 
   
   Continue with the oranges, melon, banana, lemon, green apples and so on, placing them in colour order so that the harvest rainbow forms. Comment that few fruits are coloured blue or indigo, but introduce the dish of blueberries and, finally, two different shades of purple with the grapes and plums.
   
   
3. As you do this, take time to introduce the fruits in turn. Note their different shapes and sizes. With older children, discuss where and how are they grown.
   
   
4. Reflect that the harvest rainbow is bright and healthy! Fruit is good for us to eat.
   
   It contains the fresh vitamins and fibre needed to keep our bodies strong and well.
   
   
5. In a church school, you could go on to explain that, at harvest time, Christians remember the rainbow that appears in the story of Noah.
   
   Display the image with the rainbow created as described in the ‘Preparation and materials’ section above.
   
   That rainbow was a sign of God’s care for the world. It spoke of the patterns of nature and people remembered an age-old promise God made (Genesis 8.22, GNB): 
   
   As long as the earth lasts, there will be a time for planting and a time for harvest. There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.
   
   
6. Observe that the harvest rainbow celebrates the good things of life, which are for us to enjoy. The ‘colours of the rainbow’ fill the world around us. Do we take time to see and appreciate them?
   
   
7. Finally, reflect that eventually all rainbows disappear. Explain that this might happen to this rainbow, too, if we make a fruit salad to taste the different colours of the harvest rainbow!

Time for reflection

Prayer
Creator God,
Today we are thankful for  . . .
the rainbow colours of your world
brilliant fruit that is good to eat
the light of day and the darkness of night
the beauty of the changing seasons 
nature’s patterns of seedtime and harvest.
Thank you!
Amen.

Song/music

‘All things bright and beautiful’ (Come and Praise, 3)
‘Pears and apples’ (Come and Praise, 135)
‘Food colours’ (A Combined Harvest,Out of the Ark Music, 2008)
‘Juicy fruit’ (S!ng Harvest,Out of the Ark Music, 2012)