Equipment: laptop, speakers, projector, cream crackers, slice of bread, pre-cut card loop (you may also want a video of this being done…click here for ours), , cinnamon challenge video (from youtube – you may want to shorten this), Presentation (Keynote | Powerpoint)

Introduce yourself, what you do etc.

Introduction: Easter and 2 weeks off school are only a week or so away and so today we’re going to bring you a bit of an Easter assembly.

Rumour has it that in the 60’s Pepsi decided to try and expand their market share and in doing this came up with the slogan ‘Come alive with Pepsi’ which isn’t a bad slogan however when they translated it into Chinese the interpretation became ‘Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead’.

Now I don’t know about your but I don’t think that bringing people back from the dead is a quality that Pepsi has.

And I guess, if that story is true as people passed these billboards for Pepsi in China they had to decide whether it was true or not. Could Pepsi bring back their relatives?

And a lot of the time we come across things in life and we have to decide whether they’re true or not and so this morning we want to present you with 4 tasks and we want to find out if you think they’re true and then we’re going to find out and put them to the test.

Slide: 4 slides for the challenges.

So our 4 challenges this morning are:

• To eat a slice of bread in less than 60 seconds (with no water)
• The Cinnamon Challenge (A spoon of cinnamon must be eaten in its entirety)
• To step through a playing card
• To eat 6 cream crackers in less than a minute (with no water)

To start with I want to find out which of these you think are possible (take votes on possible/not possible and record the majorities).

Bread & Crackers

Ok so both our bread and crackers challenges need a minute to do so we’re going to do them back to back. (Use a 1/2 team members to do these challenges…you may need to do them separately if you don’t have a few of you presenting the assembly. We had some teachers volunteer to do this)

Do the challenges then explain…

Explain: Believe it or not both of these are impossible with no water. The reason is simply that both bread and crackers are dry and so take the saliva out of your mouth. It doesn’t matter if you scrunch up the bread or go for it in small nibbles…it can’t be done nor can the crackers.

Cinnamon

Next…the cinnamon challenge.

I’m sure lots of you have sat and watched videos of this on YouTube or maybe even made your own but we’re not going to do it this morning because it is actually incredibly dangerous.

And the reason it’s dangerous is that cinnamon is hydrophilic which means it dries up your saliva instantly…and the consequence of this is that it can then cause coughing and vomiting plus if you inhale it it can cause throat irritation, breathing difficulties and potentially pneumonia. So it’s not a good thing to try.

But it is just about possible…watch this from the Discovery Channel Show ‘Mythbusters’

Video: Edit down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXkGtJUP0WE and show it.

Playing Card

Our final challenge is whether it is possible to step through a playing card. It may sound impossible but with some careful cutting it is possible to turn a playing card into a continuous loop which you can, in-fact step through…in fact the world record for this task saw someone step through a stamp!

Demo this one either using photos of a pre-made demo or using a video of it being done. If you have a made version you can get students to actually step through after showing the video this is good. This is our video.

Summary

So this morning we have proven that 2 of our 4 challenges are impossible but 2 are possible.

You may disagree with us…you may think for example the slice of bread challenge has to be possible.

Maybe you won’t believe us unless it’s something you’ve tried and experienced yourself even though you’ve seen it this morning.

Or perhaps having seen them this morning you agree with our findings. You agree that the bread and cracker challenge can’t be done but the card and cinnamon challenge can.

[PAUSE]

We are all faced with choices we have to make about whether we believe things or not.

We have to look at the evidence and we have to make up our own minds.

We have to decide whether not seeing something in person is enough evidence to believe if it is possible or not.

Some things that seem impossible are possible and likewise some things that seem possible are not but unless we witness them first hand we have to decide whether to have faith in what we’re told about them.

Over Easter Christian’s celebrate the belief that Jesus died and rose from the dead (without the use of Pepsi!) none of the Christians alive today were there but there is historical evidence for his existence and 2 billion people in the world who call themselves Christians choose to believe that Jesus died and rose again and the bible talks about hundreds of people seeing Jesus after He came back to life.

But ultimately it’s a choice that you make. Do you believe it is possible or not?

And if you do believe it’s possible what impact or difference does that make to your life?

Thanks for listening.