Fruit salad

To explore the importance of being healthy both in body and in attitudes to others.

by Penny Hollander

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To explore the importance of being healthy both in body and in attitudes to others.

Preparation and materials

• You will need a bowl containing a variety of fruits we enjoy from different parts of the world. Try to include some unusual ones, e.g. star fruit, persimmon, lychee.
• A chopping board and fruit knife will be needed if you want to include mixing the fruit together.
• A flipchart and pens or whiteboard.

Assembly

1. Take the fruits out of the bowl one by one and ask the children what they are. Take a vote on which they like the best. Make a list of the votes on the flipchart or whiteboard. Ask individual children the reasons for their choice, e.g. taste, look and ease of eating. When did they last try something different that they haven’t tasted before?
2. Suggest that in addition to eating fruit that we like, we should think about the variety of fruit that we eat, and about the current guidelines of five portions of fruit or vegetables a day that will help keep us healthy.
3. Point out that if some people find it difficult to say which they like best we can always make a fruit salad! Put the fruit back into the bowl, or get individual children, under supervision, to help peel, cut and chop the fruit. Or, to avoid the dangers of cutting and chopping, this can be done outside of the assembly and children can enjoy it at break or lunchtime. Or have some fruit ready cut so that the children do the mixing.
4. Suggest that the people in the world are a little like a bowl of fruit salad – all different shapes, sizes, colours, etc. We may come across the unfamiliar, rather like unusual fruits. We only get to appreciate different kinds of people by experience. Every person in the world is part of that giant fruit salad!
   
   They may look different from us, and have a different outlook on life, but like the fruit, they are all part of creation. To be healthy in attitude as well as in body we need to have respect for others and appreciate their differences as well as their similarities.
5. The Bible talks about God being happy with everything that God created. Read Genesis 1.31, or display it on the whiteboard, perhaps with appropriate pictures:
   
   God saw everything he had made. And it was very good.
   
   Final reflective questions: If God is happy with everything he has made, should we be happy with it too? Are healthy attitudes as important as healthy bodies?

Time for reflection

Reflection

Think for a few moments about the different people we know – in school, our friends, our families, neighbours, people we meet in shops, on the bus and in many other places. What are our reactions to them? Do we show them care, respect, tolerance – even if they are different from us? How can we do this? We are all part of one big world that has been given to us.

Prayer

Thank you, God, that each of us has a part in the wonderful world you have created.

Teach us not only how to have healthy bodies
but also how to have healthy attitudes to one another.

Amen.

Song/music

‘Think of a world’ (Come and Praise, 17)