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Sun

To look at the use of the sun as an image of life and promise. To consider the phrase, do not let the sun go down on your anger

by Gordon and Ronni Lamont

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To look at the use of the sun as an image of life and promise. To rejoice at each new day. To consider the phrase, 'Do not let the sun go down on your anger'.

Preparation and materials

  • Choose some suitable music, such as 'Here comes the sun'.
  • If appropriate, a class or classes could prepare poems and pictures about the sun in advance for section 3.
  • A class could present the 'sun science' in section 2.

Assembly

  1. Play the music as the children enter, then ask them to sit quietly and enjoy the music a little longer, and consider what the theme of today's assembly might be.

  2. Turn off the music and ask for suggestions about the day's theme. Once 'the sun' is established, ask for any information the children have about the sun. This might include:

    The sun is a star.
    It is special to us because it is 'our star'.
    All the planets in the solar system, including the Earth, orbit (go around) the sun.
    The Earth is about 93 million miles from the sun (approximately 149,476,000 kilometres).
    The Earth is at just about the right distance from the sun - much closer and we'd all be too hot and everything would die; much further away and it would be too cold for life.

  3. Ask if the children know any poems about the sun or mentions of the sun in any books. If time allows read some out. Some possibilities include the dark red ancient sun in The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis, and the trolls who turn to stone in the sun in The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.

  4. Talk about any well-known phrases that use the sun: 'everything under the sun'; 'his/her day in the sun', 'make hay while the sun shines'.

  5. Talk about the Ancient Egyptians and their worship of the sun. Also Stonehenge, which is aligned to the rising of the sun at the summer solstice. Discuss with the children why the sun was so important to ancient people - the idea of the sun representing life, giving us warmth and light and, because of crops, hope for the future.

  6. Introduce the phrase from Paul's letter to the Ephesians (4.26): 'Do not let the sun go down on your anger'. What do they think this means?

    Draw out the idea of ending each day knowing that you have made peace with everyone with no bad feeling left over for tomorrow. Sum this up with the phrase, 'There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.'

Time for reflection

Suggest that the children practise 'thought replacement': if they find themselves having an angry thought, like, 'She shouldn't have done that, I don't like her,' replace it with a good thought, like, 'She shouldn't have done that, but that's up to her and I'm not going to let it bother me.'

Song/music

'Morning sun, morning sun' (Come and Praise, 93)

Publication date: June 2003   (Vol.5 No.6)    Published by SPCK, London, UK.
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