12 Brilliant Harvest Assembly Ideas
By Tom Kirkham and Philippa Pearne
Each year, the Harvest Festival gives us the opportunity to educate the next generation about where food comes from and to celebrate the hard work of local and international farmers, but coming up with new and engaging harvest assembly ideas can be hard work in and of itself! In the hope of relieving some of that back-to-school stress this Autumn, we have compiled a list of Harvest Festival assembly ideas that entertain your younger years while giving your older students something to think about.
Harvest Assembly Ideas for KS1 Students
The success of an assembly for KS1 students comes down to its ability to hold the attention of your students and hold their hands through unfamiliar subjects – and your Harvest Festival assembly should be no different! In our modern world of supermarkets and home deliveries, young children could be forgiven for assuming that food is made in factories or magically appears on the shelves each morning. Set the record straight with some of these fun yet educational harvest assembly ideas for KS1 students.
1. Share their favourite foods
After handing out slips of coloured paper, ask your students to write a sentence about why they love their favourite food, then collect them in a woven basket. This is an excellent way to get your students involved from the start, while filling the basket with coloured paper will make it resemble a cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables, for some added Harvest Festival flair!
Once all the paper has been collected, read out some examples while giving some context about the origins of their favourite foods. We recommend having someone on hand to do some speedy internet searches in case any exotic foods are mentioned! Whether your students have written about how much they love fruit, or they clued you into an enticing foreign dish, this harvest assembly activity gives them some idea about where their favourite foods come from and why they should be thankful.
What you’ll need:
● Coloured paper
● Pens
● Basket
● Someone with fast typing fingers
2. Create artwork for your harvest display
Arranging fruits, vegetables and any other donated food at the front of the stage is a staple of any Harvest Festival assembly, but our idea to take it up a notch is to get your students to contribute their own artwork to the display. In the week leading up to the harvest assembly, ask your students to draw large pictures of fruits or vegetables on A4 pieces of paper. When all the artwork has been collected, create a collage to be displayed alongside the real fruits and vegetables, or to welcome your students as they enter the assembly hall.
This activity allows your students' children to feel part of the harvest celebration, while building their excitement and anticipation for the assembly as they look forward to seeing their artwork displayed alongside their classmates’.
What you'll need:
● A4 paper
● Colouring pencils
● Cardboard backing (for the collage)
3. Take your students leaf picking
There are a few things more exciting about Autumn for younger children than donning your wellies and stomping around in the fallen leaves. Combine that with your teacher announcing a break from the classroom to do just that in the middle of the school day, and you have already laid the groundwork for a thoroughly memorable harvest assembly activity.
While taking your students for a walk into nature, tell them to find the brightest red, yellow or orange leaf that they can. Once you’re back in the classroom, ask them to write one word that they think best describes or relates to harvest on it. Afterwards, collect the leaves in a basket and keep them safe until your harvest assembly, where they can be shared and used as discussion points.
What you'll need:
● Pens
● Basket
4. Sing some harvest songs
Nothing brings students together like singing harvest assembly songs, while their catchy lyrics and infectious melodies are perfect for driving home the core ideas of your harvest assembly. Our Harvest Songbook features two fabulous songs for KS1 children. Big Blue Tractor by Niki Davies captures the harvesting process while evoking some enchanting autumnal images, whereas Harvest Tango by Matthew Crossey and Tom Kirkham is a wonderfully wacky tribute to the incredible diversity of produce available to us.
Whether you want to make it a live music session with guitar or piano accompaniment, or simply play tracks from a computer, our downloadable song pack has all the resources you need to ensure your harvest assembly is a smash hit!
What you'll need:
● Harvest Songbook
● Computer and speakers (to play the vocal or backing tracks)
● Guitar or piano (to perform the music)
Harvest Assembly Ideas for KS2 Students
While some celebration is still in order, an assembly for KS2 students should appeal to their inquisitive nature and growing thirst for knowledge. Building on the ideas imparted during their KS1 harvest assemblies, you can encourage your students to consider their food consumption in the context of the wider world, increasing their awareness and appreciation for what they have.
We appreciate that tackling these topics while still making space for fun is less straightforward, so here are some of our harvest assembly ideas for KS2 students to set you on the right track.
1. Take them on an international food journey
Separate your students into groups and allocate them a country. Depending on how many ideas you are trying to pack into your harvest assembly, you could distribute flags to the corresponding countries, or provide paper, pencils and wooden dowels such that your students can create their own.
Once everyone has their flags at the ready, present pictures of different items of world cuisine, prompting your students to raise their flag if they think that the food item originates from their country. When everyone has had a chance to guess, reveal the correct country and open the floor to suggestions of other foods that come from the same place. It may be useful to indicate where that country is relative to the UK on a world map, so that your students have a clear visualisation of how far these foods have travelled to reach their local supermarket shelves.
This activity is designed not only to test your students’ understanding of international food cultures, but to teach them about the carbon footprint of certain foods and consider how they could change their eating habits to benefit the environment.
What you'll need:
● Printouts or projected images of world foods
● World map
● National flags
● A4 paper
● Colouring pencils
● Pens
● Wooden doweling
2. Put on a harvest-themed performance
Devising an entertaining yet educational performance with harvest themes is an excellent way to involve your students in the celebrations, while promoting them to share ideas about the Harvest Festival ahead of the assembly. From prompting your students to create dynamic freeze frames based on harvest vocabulary to writing short scenes that illustrate the history of the Harvest Festival or how the harvest is celebrated around the world, this activity is sure to leave an impression on your audience and actors alike.
What you'll need:
● Costumes
● Props
● Plenty of imagination!
3. Write monologues from harvest-related characters
On the subject of performance, why not ask your students to write and perform monologues from the perspective of different characters who are related to your discussion of the Harvest Festival? Encourage your students to imagine what it must be like for the farmers who harvest the crops that supply our supermarkets, or the less fortunate members of our society who rely on harvest donations to keep food on the table.
Once your students have completed their monologues, choose a few to be performed during your assembly that would segue into your discussion points.
What you'll need:
● Paper
● Pens
4. Perform a harvest poem
We appreciate that you may not have the space in your curriculum for your students to come up with their own ideas for a harvest assembly performance, plus putting on a show for your fellow students can be a daunting prospect, even for KS2 children. Rather than lose time to writing and rehearsing original harvest performances, you could recite an easy to learn harvest poem with your students to achieve the same engagement and unity.
The editable harvest service available in our Harvest Festival Download Pack includes the poem Autumn Bounty by Tom Kirkham, which can be divided into sections such that your students can perform it in separate groups.
What you'll need:
● Harvest poem
● Harvest Festival Download Pack
Harvest Assembly Ideas for the Whole School
1. Create a fruit and vegetable rainbow
In recent years, the rainbow has become a symbol of our gratitude to keyworkers, from the public service workers on the frontlines during the pandemic to the delivery drivers, shop assistants and food bank volunteers. Extend your students' appreciation to these keyworkers by incorporating a fruit and vegetable rainbow into your harvest assembly. By allocating a colour to each year group, you will be able to create your own harvest rainbow at the front of your assembly hall from the food donated by your students.
What you'll need:
● Fruits and vegetables
2. Colourful non-uniform day
Why stop at your harvest display? Invite your students to dress in brightly coloured clothing to symbolise the multitude of foods and cultures we celebrate at the Harvest Festival each year. Furthermore, by allowing your students to don their colourful harvest clothes throughout the school day, they are more likely to hold onto the lessons and ideas from your harvest assembly long after they have exited the hall.
What you'll need:
● Brightly coloured clothes
3. Host a harvest gameshow
Test your students’ knowledge of where their food was grown or reared, how far it travelled, and what food items looked like before they were packaged and put on their supermarket shelves by hosting a harvest-themed gameshow. By posing multiple-choice questions, you can prompt your students to raise their hands for one answer and keep their hands lowered for the other.
This activity will engage your students and could even create some lively competition between your year groups, while facilitating some surprising revelations about what your students know and what they thought they knew about where their food comes from.
What you'll need:
● Gameshow questions and answers
● Music and sound effects
4. Let us do the hard work for you
Struggling to come up with a good structure or ideas for your harvest assembly? Fear not, because the School Musicals Company has created an all-encompassing Let's Get Singing Harvest service that is completely adaptable to suit the needs of your school! This songbook includes a joyous collection of harvest songs, readings, poems and reflections, arranged into a ready-to-go service.
With an editable script included as standard for you to make any adjustments you feel are necessary, our Let’s Get Singing Harvest service is your one-stop shop for all things Harvest Festival!
What you'll need:
● Let's Get Singing Harvest Songbook
● Computer and speakers (to play the vocal or backing tracks)
● Guitar or piano (to perform the music)
We hope these harvest assembly ideas have left you feeling inspired and ready to run the best harvest assembly yet! Learning about the harvest is an important part of the school year, and putting on an engaging assembly will only reinforce your students’ understanding of and appreciation for the food on their plates!
At The School Musicals Company, we have a huge selection of assembly songs for KS1 students and KS2 students, ready for you to make your own and put on exciting, engaging assemblies all year round. Explore our extensive collection to discover assembly songs for Christmas, PSHE, Year 6 Leavers and more.