I don't get to choose the themes for Assembly at Valley Church School (though every now and then I jettison the official timetable when something seems specially pressing) so I can promise I had absolutely nothing to do with this week's focus "SIGNS".
It was my turn for a key stage 1 assembly, which can be hard work...The children are squished into a relatively small room, sitting on the floor and their concentration is apt to wander, specially if I'm short of visual aids or whizzy activities.
Not today, though, despite my total failure in multi-sensory terms.
I'd decided to talk about the signs we can recognise outside- moving from the sign that welcomed us to St M's school so that we knew we had arrived, to those we had talked about at the Advent Service last week - the tinsel and wrapping paper, all the trappings of the season. Then we talked about signs of things that reveal what is happening inside us - yawning when we are tired, crying when we are sad or hurt, giggling when we are happy or excited....
Not today, though, despite my total failure in multi-sensory terms.
I'd decided to talk about the signs we can recognise outside- moving from the sign that welcomed us to St M's school so that we knew we had arrived, to those we had talked about at the Advent Service last week - the tinsel and wrapping paper, all the trappings of the season. Then we talked about signs of things that reveal what is happening inside us - yawning when we are tired, crying when we are sad or hurt, giggling when we are happy or excited....
I asked what might be the signs that we were ready "inside" to celebrate Jesus's birthday - and the children got the idea at once, producing lots of examples of behaviours that would reveal our readiness.
In the end we decided that we would adopt our four favourite signs of being ready and try to focus on one of them through each week of Advent...
So, ladies and gentlemen, here are today's signs of the Kingdom, thanks to the Infants of St M's school...
Look out for them as you make your way through Advent.
Look out for them as you make your way through Advent.
"If we don't kick, or pinch, or smack people"
"If we listen and wait"
"If we try to be kind and loving"
"If we are smiley and cheerful, not whiney"
4 comments:
Brilliant as ever! Can I pinch the idea for one of my assemblies?
Help yourself, of course :-)
Oh you, and they, are brilliant.
"If we listen and wait"
seems to me to relate to
May the Lord, when he comes,
find us watching and waiting.
but makes me think of "watch" as a very visually-oriented word for a sort of active monitoring-while-waiting which uses all the senses, not just the eyes.
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