Milo’s Monster - Tom Percival Assembly for Primary Schools
Updated: Sep 24
This Milo’s Monster assembly uses Tom Percival’s engaging picture book to explore friendship, jealousy and the difficult feelings that can sometimes appear within our friendships.
Designed for EYFS and Key Stage 1, the assembly combines storytelling, discussion and reflection to help children understand that feeling jealous is completely normal. What matters is recognising those feelings and thinking carefully about how we respond to them.
Assembly Theme: FRIENDSHIP
Suitable for: EYFS and Key Stage 1
This resource is part of our Tom Percival assemblies for primary schools and our wider collection of Books & Stories assemblies, using brilliant children’s literature as a starting point for exploring values, feelings and experiences.
What is Milo’s Monster about?
Milo’s Monster explores what happens when Milo’s best friend, Jay, starts spending time with somebody new.
Milo begins to experience jealousy, represented in the story by the Green-Eyed Monster. As those feelings grow, they begin to influence the way Milo thinks about his friendship.
The story provides an accessible way for younger children to explore a feeling that can sometimes be difficult to talk about.
Like many of the books featured in our Books & Stories assembly collection, it allows children to explore an important issue through a character rather than being expected to talk about their own friendships.
How does the assembly explore friendship?
This assembly starts by asking children to think about the qualities they might look for in a good friend before exploring what can happen when friendship becomes more complicated.
Children consider feelings such as jealousy and being left out, while learning that experiencing these feelings does not make somebody a bad friend.
Instead, the focus is on recognising our feelings and thinking about the choices we make because of them. Children are encouraged to consider kindness, trust and what it means to be a good friend even when friendship feels difficult.
This makes Milo’s Monster a useful addition to our primary school assemblies about values, giving younger children a safe and relatable way to explore friendship.
Using books to explore big ideas
Picture books can provide a brilliant starting point for conversations about feelings and relationships that might otherwise be difficult to introduce.
Our Books & Stories assemblies for primary schools use carefully chosen books to help children explore values, feelings and everyday experiences through engaging stories and characters.
Milo’s Monster focuses on friendship and jealousy, while other assemblies in our Tom Percival collection explore courage, honesty, acceptance, self-control and belonging.
What is included?
The ready-to-use assembly includes a PowerPoint presentation and accompanying instructions, with key vocabulary, an introductory activity, opportunities for discussion, reflection questions and a final thought for children to take away.
As with all of our ready-to-use primary school assemblies, the planning is built into the presentation so teachers can quickly see what to do and adapt the assembly for their own children.
Optional Christian collective worship slides are also included and can simply remain hidden when they are not required.
Collective Worship
The optional collective worship section explores Proverbs 17:17:
“A friend loves at all times.”
Children consider what “at all times” might mean, including those moments when a friend plays with somebody else, when we feel left out or jealous, or when friendship simply feels difficult.
The Bible link reinforces the idea that being a good friend is not only about the easy times. For Christians, friendship can involve choosing kindness and care even when our feelings are difficult.
The section includes opportunities for reflection and a simple interactive prayer. Schools looking for further worship resources can explore our collective worship plans for primary schools.
Do I need a copy of Milo’s Monster?
Yes. This assembly has been designed to be used alongside a copy of Milo’s Monster by Tom Percival.
The presentation does not reproduce the book or replace the original story. Instead, the activities, questions and reflections help you build an assembly around it.
If you enjoy using children’s literature in this way, you can find more titles in our Books & Stories primary assembly collection.
About Tom Percival
Tom Percival is a British author and illustrator whose picture books often explore feelings, relationships and experiences children encounter as they grow up.
His stories approach important subjects in an accessible and child-friendly way, making them particularly useful as starting points for discussion and reflection with younger children.
Books including Ruby’s Worry, Perfectly Norman and Meesha Makes Friends explore themes such as worries, acceptance, friendship and belonging. We have brought six of his books together in our growing Tom Percival assembly collection, with each assembly focusing on a different value.
Explore more Tom Percival assemblies
Milo’s Monster is one of six Tom Percival books featured in this collection:
Each assembly can be used independently, or use the collection to explore six different values through the work of one author.
Looking for your next assembly?
Explore our Books & Stories assemblies for more resources using children’s literature to explore important themes and values.
Or browse all primary school assembly plans to discover ready-to-use resources across Books & Stories, Famous Faces, British Values, Faith Heroes and Times & Places.
Assembly Resources:
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