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Required Resources:Small pack of sweets, paper clip, teabag, 3 cups. Props as per sketch (see additional materials) Additional Materials:Prodigal Son script
Topic:Life & Living (Friendship, Trust, Choices) Theme:The decisions that we make very often have an impact on the people around us - for good or for bad. How can we make choices that will help other people, as well as us? Plan:GAME: Presents!You will need 3 cups and 3 small items to go underneath, e.g. a small pack of sweets, a paper clip and a teabag. Have these set up beforehand so that the children don't know what the cups are hiding. Invite a volunteer to the front. Explain that you would like to give somebody - either another member of the team or a teacher - a little present to say thank you for their hard work, and it is up to your volunteer to choose one. Present the cups. Spin out the decision making process - are they sure they want this one?, etc... Finally reveal what they have chosen - and then what they might have had... Explain that the decision made by one person had an impact on somebody else. If your volunteer chose well, it had a good effect. If they didn't, it wasn't such a great outcome for the person receiving the present! In life, lots of our choices have an impact on others, but do we stop to think about it? STORY: The Prodigal Son Explain that there is a story Jesus told in the Bible about a young man who was faced with a decision. Using the attached script, act out Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son using children to improvise. TALK: Making decisions In our story, the son made several choices. His first choice was to leave home. At the time, he thought it was a great idea, even though this hurt his dad a lot. In the end though, this choice hurt himself too when he lost money, food and home. Thankfully for him, it wasn't too late to do something about this bad choice. He was able to make it right by his next decision: to come home and say sorry. This choice made his dad happy too - he had been waiting a long time for his boy to come back to him. Every single one of us makes hundreds of choices every day, from the moment we get up and choose which socks to wear, to the television programme we watch when we get home from school. These choices may not affect other people much, but plenty of decisions do. And we can choose either to help others through our decisions, or hurt them. Two examples: 1. How we speak to people. If we are kind in the way we talk to people, they end up feeling good. If we are rude to them, or call them names - even if we think we are joking - they can end up feeling rubbish. 2. How we spend our spare time. We can choose to help others with the time we have free - like helping mum wash up. Or we can spend it all on the computer. It might seem like fun at the time, but no-one else benefits from it and in the end, we just end up unhealthy from having no exercise and getting lazier by the minute! As a Christian I believe that God cares about our decisions – He wants us to make choices that will be best for us and for the people around us. The starting point comes with realising that what you say and do can work for real good in the world, or bad. It's completely up to you. REFLECTION Today, as you are at school – think about what your decisions will do to others and to yourself and see if you can make good decisions. Author:Submitted by: EFYFC & YFC HQ Contact Details: YFC HQ Attachments:
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