This assembly could be used as a transition assembly to follow our ‘Coping with Change’ assembly or could work as a stand alone assembly.

Assembly Aims: To explore different emotions and how they make us feel. To explore ways which we can deal with emotions and to think about how Jesus dealt with emotions.

Items needed: PowerPoint Presentation (click to download), Toy Story 1 Video clip

Intro: Introduce yourself, who you are etc.

Explain: (if you used Transitional Assembly 1)…Last week we were thinking all about change and the changes that might go on in our lives and we thought about Daniel and his friends and how they dealt with change with God’s help.

This morning we’re going to be thinking about emotion. Who can tell me what emotion means?

Emotion is a word that means how we feel and I want us to play a bit of a game to think about our emotions this morning.

How many of you have heard of smily’s?

Smily’s are different keys on a computer keyboard put together to make a face to communicate how we feel…lots of people use them on text messages or on the internet when they’re talking to people and I want you to try and guess what the different emotions might mean.

Game: Guess the emotion game (using powerpoint)

Explain: Those are some really simple  emotions we might feel and smily’s are a really simple way of expressing that emotion to people we might know.

I want us to think a bit more about emotions and show you a short clip from Toy Story. It’s right at the beginning of the film and we know it’s close to Andy’s birthday and it’s almost moving day too!

Video Clip: Toy Story 1 – From 5 mins 40 seconds until 7 minutes 48 seconds.

Ask: What different emotions were in that clip?

Explain: All of those things along with our smily’s are lots of different feelings we might experience.

Ask: Can anyone be brave enough to pick one of them and tell us about a time when they felt one of them? For example I always get nervous before I do an assembly because there’s lots of you watching me and listening to me and only one of me!

(Take 3 or 4 stories from people)

Explain: Our emotions are really important because they can help us explain to people how we feel and if we can explain to people how we feel we can help each other to cope with these feelings and we can cope with them in a good way rather than in a way that might hurt other people.

Ask: For example when it’s your birthday how do you feel?

Explain: I don’t know about you but when I was your age the few days before my birthday I’d get really excited and then the night before I’d find it really difficult to sleep because it was so close to my birthday and I just wanted it to be here!

Then when I’d wake up my parents used to decorate the house with balloons and banners and that was really exciting and then when I’d get home from school all the excitement would continue and it was fantastic…I love birthdays!

But it wasn’t just my birthday because when I had friends who had birthdays and they had birthday parties we all shared each others excitement.

Ask: Who gets excited about going to friend’s birthday parties?

Explain: Going to a birthday party and being excited about it is a way of sharing that emotion of being happy with each other and celebrating.

The same way we can share and celebrate our happy times we can also help each other when we’re sad.

Ask: How can we help each other when we’re sad?

Explain: There’s lots of different ways we can look after ourselves when we feel different things and it’s really important that we’re aware of how we feel so we can re-act to those things appropriately.

Especially if we’re sad, upset or scared whether it’s because of something happening at home, something someone’s said to us, something we’ve seen on TV or something to do with changing school it’s really important that we tell people about it and that we don’t just keep it to ourselves but that we ask for help.

One thing that I believe as a Christian is that Jesus knows how it feels to feel all of the emotions we felt about. The bible tells us in lots of different places that Jesus felt happy, excited, sad, nervous, angry and even that Jesus cried and so however we’re feeling as well I believe that Jesus can help us deal with those feelings too if we pray and ask Him.

Reflection: I want to finish this mornings assembly by reading a short reflection so I’d like you to sit and really think about the words of this. (Taken from assemblies.org.uk)

When things go well and happiness comes my way,

It’s good to enjoy happiness, to have a joyful day.

But when people annoy me, I can get a bit mad.

Angry feelings take over me,

Or I feel nervous or I feel sad.

I can keep those feelings in their place.

They’re not the biggest deal,

They are not me,

They’re NOT me.

They’re just something that I feel.

Prayer (also taken from assemblies.org.uk)

Thank you for all the feelings we have and that each one has its place.

It’s right to be scared if we’re in danger.

It’s great to be happy when we can.

Please help us to control our bad feelings and not be overwhelmed by them.

Amen.