Items needed: a creative way of showing the Family Fortunes answers (you could use powerpoint or have a board with the answers covered up), laptop, projector, sound, Jonah and the Whale YouTube video

Aim: To help the children think about changes that happen and how to deal with them.

Time needed: 20 minutes

1. Introduction

Introduce yourself and ask if any of the children remember what was talked about last week (this assumes you used transition assembly 1 – Fears and Phobias – link)

Say that today is all about change

2. Family Fortunes

Who’s heard of family fortunes?

Explain that it’s a TV quiz show where lots of people are asked a question and the contestants must guess what the top 5 answers are.

Our survey today asked 750 school children what is the scariest thing about moving to secondary school?

Olrder Children, being bullied

Getting lost

Fear of not making friends/ knowing anyone

Amount of work/homework

Size of school

(Explain that we’ll talk about some of those at the end with year 6)

3. Changes

Ask the children to suggest changes that happen in their lives

Now ask them how they feel when something changes…who’s moved house? how did you feel?

Each of you is moving up a school year in the next couple of months…some even moving school and each of those things is going to mean a change…and changes mean we have new challenges and we talked last week about how they might scare us but we’re going to hear a story about a man who went through a big change.

4. Video – Jonah and the Whale (Year 4) – YouTube Link

Ask some questions afterwards

So Jonah was given a choice…he could either go to Ninivah or he could run away…what did he do?

What happened when he ran away?

How did the story end?

5. The Message

So Jonah was going to experience a change in his life…he was going to have to go to a place he’d never been and he was scared about this but rather than going for it knowing that God was with him he ran away but eventually ended up in Ninivah facing the challenge of change and getting on with it and it went really well for him even though he was scared.

So for all of you moving class or school or house or whatever the change is remember that it wont be that scary and we’ll enjoy ourselves.

6. Prayer to Finish

Thank God that change is a good thing and that it challenges us and helps us become better people. Ask him to be with us in the changes we experience