Use these easy book-themed activities to celebrate World Book Day with your children.
Use these easy book-themed activities to celebrate World Book Day with your children.
We’ve had our People Book for a couple of years now and it’s loved by the babies and toddlers who read it. Very young children are naturally drawn to looking at faces, so why not capture their interest by making a book of their favourite faces for them.
Our book includes lots of pictures of people the children know: themselves, family and friends. They just love it when they spot someone they recognise! It also provides lots of opportunity to chat and ask questions about what everyone looks like, and to play i-spy.
We’ve added in some pictures from magazines so we could include a whole range of people: different ages, sexes, hair and skin colours, wearing glasses, wearing headscarves, in wheelchairs, in different family groups. It’s a good way to introduce aspects of the world to your child – and if you’re working in an early years setting and wanting to provide multi-cultural resources, this is a great way to reflect your society. It can also be a useful way to link home and an childcare setting, as you can ask parents to send in some pictures from home for you to include.
You could also make a version that includes faces showing different emotions, and begin to talk about having different feelings.
We glued our faces onto coloured sugar paper, laminated them and then bound them together, which gave us a sturdy book which has lasted lots of toddler handing. If you don’t have access to a laminater, a photograph album or a scrapbook are good alternatives.
Do you make you own books with your children? Do they read them as much as other story books?
Storybook Springboard – bringing books to life
The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr is one of our all time favourite stories. My girls are spellbound by the idea of a tiger popping round and helping himself to all the cakes. It’s also a perfect book to use as a springboard for lots of other play and learning activities. Here are a few ideas:
When children first begin to engage in imaginary play it’s usually by role-playing things they see in their everyday life – feeding their teddy, giving their doll a bath, chatting to daddy on the phone. This is a valuable way for them to try out a different experience and practise all the language associated with it. As they get a little older and their view of the world expands beyond their own homelife they start to play in more imaginative, fantasy ways. The Tiger Who Came to Tea is a great book to use to foster this creative play and get them using their imagination. You could try some face painting, so they can be the tiger themselves. Add in some props, such as a tea set and some packets of food, and they can recreate the story – and then adapt it and make up their own endings too.
As an alternative you could make a tiger mask.
Or how about making a tiger puppet so they can play out the story on a small scale.
Everyone learns best when a new idea is linked in with other experiences which re-inforce the new. Can you have some fun bringing your child’s favourite book to life today?
This post is linking in with The Gallery, hosted by Tara at Sticky Fingers, where the theme this week is A Novel Idea – a photo inspired by your favourite book. Why not pop over and see the other pictures for more inspiration?
Happily shared with…
Alongside learning how to read, write your own name and tie up your shoes laces, learning how to understand and deal with your emotions is an equally important part of early learning. If we hope to raise happy, reasonable and persevering children we should spend time nurturing their emotional well-being as well as counting, baking and making crafts with them.
One way we try to do this is by using books. There are lots of books which feature characters coping with lots of different emotions: happiness, sadness, nerves, fear, jealousy – and you can find a selection shown below. But how about making a book about your own child to really capture their interest and give you the perfect opportunity to talk about how they feel?
The You Tube clip above shows a book we made for Little and retells her battle with frustration and shows how bouncing back from defeat can lead to success! Why don’t you make one for your child? Sit with them as they tackle a challenge and create your own photo story.
Or how about creating a book of the many faces of your child? Put together a selection of photos showing times when they were laughing, cross, tired or giggling. Add a word to describe each photo and read it together. This will open up lots of converation about different feelings. I’m certain you’ll find kids just love reading books in which they are the central character.