Open The Book

Open the Book is a project which offers primary school children an opportunity to hear the major stories of the Bible presented through the school year. It is a free service given to each school by a team of Christians from local churches. Each presentation takes a maximum of 10 minutes and is based on The Lion Storyteller Bible with additional story scripts in years 2 and 3 by Bob Hartman. Open the Book fulfils OFSTED inspection requirements for Collective Worship and has been successfully used in a multi-faith context.

Hucclecote Methodist Church takes Open the Book into Coopers Edge school (as part of an ecumenical team) on a monthly basis and an all-Methodist team goes into Dinglewell Infant School every week. Most weeks there is an opportunity for several children to dress up and take part in the action and there is never a shortage of volunteers! The adult "actors" and prop makers thoroughly enjoy the challenges involved in creating characters such as the giant Goliath, storms at sea, doves, lions and whales. We have developed ingenious ways of hiding the lines we never quite manage to learn. The children are very accepting of our limited skills and seem to enjoy our presentations but, above all, it is seeing the reaction of the children that makes it worth the effort.

Open the Book is an opportunity to share Bible stories with many, many more children than we are able to do within our church building these days. Our teams are very dedicated but we all take holidays, have appointments etc so it is useful to have other people we can call on from time to time. Please come and have a chat if you think you can help.