Spoon Wars

Preparation: get hold of some stick-on googly eyes. Assemble enough spoons/ forks/ safe kitchen implements for the children to have roughly two each. (You may need fewer if you want them to work in pairs.) 
Stick eyes on a fork of your own, ready to use as a character.

Delivery:
say to the children -

Do you ever stop to think what happens when your house is empty? When you go off to school, and your parents go to work or out to the shops, and the place is silent? Have you ever thought it might not be?

What if the things you use every day have a life of their own??

What if the chair you sit in thinks, “Ooof!” when you sit down? Or the wellie you carelessly splash through a puddle thinks, “Eugh, now I’m all wet!” Maybe the taps think, “Not so tight!” when you turn them off. Maybe the blunt crayon in the pot is silently screaming, “Sharpen me!”

And how do they all get on, these things that live in your house? Does the big joint of meat in the fridge bully the little yoghurt pot? When you close the drawer on your socks, do they all start to fight with each other? Do your school shoes complain that your trainers pong? Does the nice clean soap in the bathroom shout insults at the toilet roll?

I’ve brought someone along today who’d like you to think about the kind of life she has, and she’s brought some friends along with her.

Hold up your fork so the children can see it has eyes, and look at it expectantly. Bring it near to your ear as if listening to it.

Forky, is there anything you’d like to tell us?

Assume the voice of the fork.

I don’t suppose you've ever stopped to think what my life is like. Shoved head-first into boiling hot food, and then – eugh- stuffed into your gaping mouth and sucked clean. Then after the meal, thrown into the dishwasher or sink and bombarded with detergent. After THAT tossed into a drawer with the knives and spoons, and the spoons are SO snooty, and the knives are SO aggressive. Horrible. It'e even worse if you get into the wrong compartment. Once I spent whole night with knives. I was lucky to survive. Mind you, some of the other forks aren’t very nice…

Lower the fork, frowning, and resume speaking in your own voice.

That’s enough from Forky. She’s getting hysterical.

Now I’ll give give out some of Forky’s friends, and some stick-on eyes, and you’re going to write a short playscript of a conversation between two pieces of cutlery. You can work in pairs, threes or on your own. Be ready to read it out/perform it later on...

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Notes: although this is a light lesson built for fun, it revises playscript format which in turn could be a lead-in to paragraphing direct speech.