You’ve Got a Friend in Me
What does it mean to be a good friend?
by Becky May
Suitable for Whole School (Pri)
Aims
To explore how we can show friendship to everyone.
Preparation and materials
- You will need to be familiar with the story of Ruth that is found in the Bible so that you can tell it to the children during the ‘Time for reflection’ part of the assembly.
Alternatively, have available the YouTube video ‘Ruth (The Book of Ruth)’ and the means to show it during the assembly. It is 1.15 minutes long and is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyr3AyI7zVY
Assembly
- Welcome the children to the assembly and ask them how they are feeling today. Is this a good day, or not such a good day? What can we do about that?
- Ask the children to think about their good friends. Invite them to share, without naming names, some examples of why they are friends with certain people and how they have shown friendship to one another.
- Ask the children whether they can think of any unlikely friendship pairings in children’s stories, TV programmes or films. For example, there are Hiccup and Toothless in the series How to Train Your Dragon, the BFG and Sophie in the story by Roald Dahl and many more.
Ask the children what they think caused some of these characters to become friends and what stands out about their friendships.
Listen to a range of responses. - Explain to the children that friendship is more than simply finding someone we get on well with, or have a lot in common with. Friendship is something that we can show to everyone. It’s lovely to have good friends - and best friends too: those are really special - but there is no limit to how many friends we can have, and our ability to show friendship never runs out.
- Ask the children whether they can think of some ways in which we can show friendship to others, especially to those who may not naturally be our friends. Perhaps there are some people we don’t know very well or some people who are different from us.
Encourage the children to share their ideas.
Time for reflection
Encourage the children to make themselves really quiet so that they can listen to a story.
Summarize the Bible story of Ruth, who chose to show friendship to her mother-in-law, Naomi, after her husband died and travelled back with Naomi to her home to take care of her. Alternatively, show the YouTube video ‘Ruth (The Book of Ruth)’ (1.15 minutes long).
Encourage the children to think about someone they could choose to show friendship to today. Point out that, just like Ruth and Naomi, you never know: we may end up becoming really good friends!
Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you for our friends:
For good friends and best friends, old friends and new friends.
Please help us today to spot people we can show friendship to.
Please help us to have the courage to perform those first acts of kindness.
Amen.
Song/music
‘You’ve got a friend in me’ from the film Toy Story 4, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNZUKm0ApEM (2.08 minutes long)
Extension activities
- Hold some circle-time sessions during the week to enable the children to talk further about different ways in which they can show friendship to others.
- Consider creating some kind of award for those children who go out of their way to show friendship to others, perhaps nominated by other children.
