Open the Book

Open the Book is a 3 year rolling assembly programme backed by The Bible Society and has been running nationally for nearly 20 years

• September 2013: we started running the programme at Great Binfields Primary for their Key Stage 1 (age 4-7) children we meet at the school on a Monday afternoon from 2-3pm
• September 2014: we started to run Open the Book at Four lanes Infants on a Wednesday morning  (between 9:45 and 10:45) repeating the programme we did at Great Binfields in 2013 and continued to run the second year programme at Great Binfields.
• September 2015: we ran the third year programme at both schools.
• September 2016: we started all over again with the year 1 programme in both schools and more teams started across the town including at King Furlongs Infants on Thursday mornings run by Marianne Sales from this church.
• September 2017: we changed from Four Lanes Infants to Marnel Junior where we now do the Assembly twice on a Wednesday morning (Between 9:30 and 11am) firstly to the Year 5/6 (children aged 9-11) and then Years 3/4 (children aged 7-9). This has been going really well and as the children are that little bit older we can ask them to take more complicated roles in the story.

This has involved a group of volunteers (from a number of churches across Basingstoke) going into the schools and acting out a bible story – with the children’s help of course.

The first year is a whistle stop tour through the bible with an assembly for all the key Old Testament bible characters, from Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Moses, to David, Daniel and Nehemiah. Then the story of Jesus is told in more detail from his birth, childhood, baptism, the calling of the disciples, his teaching and miracles to the events of Holy week and his ascension.

The second and third year programmes are modular 16 modules total, including 3 modules  about Jesus, modules about Adventures in the Old Testament , Trusting God and Meals to Remember, David, the First Christians, Paul, Easter and Christmas  each year,  and also 3 modules Men, Women and Children Who Dared to do Right.

In September 2016 we started all over again with the year 1 programme in both schools and more teams started across the town including at King Furlongs Infants on Thursday mornings run by Marianne Sales from this church.

The Children love the stories and look forward to the Open the Book assemblies, they love having the chance to take part like below or as a whole making sound effects- we had some very noisy lions.
  
We are looking to recruit more volunteers to help.

Could you narrate the story, act out a part, or help with costumes or props?

There is no need to learn lines as we tell the story from the Lion Storyteller Bible. 

Please pray for the work going in the schools in Chineham and across the town and please contact Maggie Chiverton on maggie@chivertonfamily.plus.com for more information.
See www.openthebook.net for details.