Bible: Daniel 1
Aim: To help children understand that they can make good choices when they go to secondary school, and how those choices can be beneficial.
You will need: large sheets of paper and marker pens, different foods, bowls, spoons, blindfolds and a young person who has recently left secondary school.
Introduction
Organise the children into groups and ask them to decide on their three favourite foods. Encourage the whole group to agree on the top three. Give out sheets of paper and marker pens for the groups to record their decisions. Once everyone has finished, ask each group to feedback their favourites. Were there any unusual choices? Was anything healthy or was it all junk food? Try to decide what the most popular food was for school leavers!
Game
Before the session, put a range of four or five foods into bowls and cover them up, so that no one can see what they are. You might choose something the children would like, such as chocolate, custard or a biscuit. Include some that might be less popular, such as a raw tomato or cooked broccoli. Avoid any foods that contain common allergens. Ask for two or three volunteers. Explain that you are going to blindfold your volunteers and then feed them the food you have brought. Say that they have the choice to refuse one of the foods, depending on the rest of the children’s reactions. Check for any allergies before you start. Once you have blindfolded the children, feed them each food in turn, making sure to show the rest of the children what it is, so that they can give a noisy reaction.
Have fun tasting the foods and then ask the volunteers to describe how easy it was to choose whether to eat the food or not. Which were their favourite tastes?
Bible story
Read Daniel 1 out to the children, or retell the story in your own words. You could use a film retelling (try the Max7 website max7.org/en or you might have access to storytelling DVDs). However you tell the story, remind the children that this story comes from the Bible. It would be good to have a Bible with you so that the children can make the visual link.
You might wish to ask for some volunteers to act out the story as you read from the Bible. Or you could create some pictures to help you recount what happened to Daniel and his friends as they stood up for God.
Reflection
Explain that Daniel and his friends were being pressured into doing something that they knew wasn’t right. Ask the children to think about how the friends got around it. Wonder together about how they might have felt going to see Ashpenaz (the king’s chief of staff). How brave must they have been, being new in a dangerous new place? How did the boys come to their decision not to eat the king’s food?
Think together about the choices you might have to make when you get to secondary school. Go back into the same groups as at the start and make a list of some of the choices. (Use the back of the piece of paper from ‘Introduction’.)
Get some feedback and chat about how to approach those particular choices.
Interview
Introduce your recent school-leaver and ask them about the choices they had to make when they first started school. (Go through with them what they might say before the assembly.) If the young person is confident, give the children the chance to ask them questions.
Prayer / thinking space
At the end of the assembly, wrap up with a simple prayer asking God to help them make the right choices when they get to secondary school. If this isn’t appropriate, ask the children to think quietly about what lies ahead of them, and remind them that if they are worried about anything, they can talk to their teachers, parents, or other trusted adults.
