Use these easy World Book Day activities and lesson plans with your children.
50 easy World Book Day activities
World Book Day is a celebration of books, stories, and reading that takes place each year in March. In 2025 World Book Day will be on Thursday 6th March.
Many home-educating groups, schools, and early years settings celebrate with book-themed events and invite their children (& parents / staff!) to dress up as their favourite book character.
You can have lots of fun theming a whole day, or a whole week of activities around books.
You can use these ideas for easy World Book Day activities to share the love of reading right across the curriculum.
Save time with our ready-made World Book Day teaching unit
For the best World Book Day lesson ideas, save time and get our ready-made World Book Day teaching unit from our Play Academy. You’ll get:
- a ready-made World Book Day thematic unit
- bonus printables to make your teaching even easier
- a guide to building a book nook
- a story writing lesson plans with free story spinner printables
- a non-fiction writing lesson plan
- a story ‘small world’ lesson plan
- a book-themed Guess Who? activity
- book-themed math activities
- a bookmark craft activity with color-in bookmark printables
- a set of book club discussion questions that you can use to talk about any book
- a Goldilocks storytelling kit
- plus over 300 more individual lesson plans in 50 ready-made teaching units so you can easily teach an engaging and successful program that includes math, literacy, science, art, and more, all year round, year after year. Everything is planned for you and easy to find, saving you so much time.
Download your World Book Day Unit here
Come and join our popular Play Academy community and never have to lesson plan again! Join here and download your first ready-made unit today.
Give reading a special place in your kids’ lives
Of course you can read anywhere, but creating a special place to read shows just how wonderful books are. It’s very simple to set up a book nook – all you really need is a place to sit and some books – but adding in some extra special touches can make a little reading den that children love to visit. You can make a book nook…
and add in this 23 reasons to read printable poster to decorate your space!
Re-tell well known stories through play
Use props and loose parts as an invitation for children to re-tell the stories they know.
You can tell stories:
with printable story telling kits
with Fairy Tale fridge magnets
with Story Stones
with storytelling cards
with a story telling tin
with a story maps
with The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities
More World Book Day activities
Try these math activities all about books
Play the Guess Who game and see if you can work out who the book character is
Host a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
or a Gruffalo party
Role play The Three Bears
Bake a Gingerbread Man
Play with a Billy Goats Gruff sensory tub
Go on a Bear Hunt
Play Are You My Mother?
Act out Lost and Found
Play in an Out of the Ocean sensory tub
Make Brown Bear, Brown Bear shadow puppets
Have afternoon tea with Charlie and Lola
Act out the Little Blue Truck
Grown your own beanstalk
Become your favourite book character
Be Captain Hook with these 35+ pirate activities
Be Pippi Longstocking and make a Museum of Turnupstuffing
Be Strega Nona
Be an elf for the shoemaker
Be Ottoline
Bring some of your favourite books to life with art and crafts
with printable bookmarks
with The Very Hungry Caterpillar crafts
with Peg Doll puppets
with The Tiger Who Came to Tea finger puppet
Make a Wild Thing mask
Encourage children to write books of their own
With a non-fiction book printable
Combine art and storytelling and make an Incy Wincy book
Take the first line of your favourite tale and write your own ending
Write a story on the wings of a bird
Put yourself in a story with speech bubbles
Fill in the blanks of an easel story
Save time and get your ready-made World Book Day unit!
Yes, you can do all the planning yourself if you want to, or you can head straight to our Play Academy and download our ready-made World Book Day unit. That sounds like a better idea!
You’ll get a set of lesson plans all based on books: fiction writing, non-fiction writing, making book nooks, book-themed math activities and arts and crafts. Plus you’ll get fun printables to make your teaching even easier.
Come and join the Play Academy to get this and over 50 more ready-made teaching units, so you can easily teach an engaging and successful program that includes math, literacy, science, art, and more, all year round, year after year.
See more and download your first unit here.
I actually really like the idea of making a World Book! Not necessarily exactly what you suggested, but maybe a culmination of things you suggested. Kind of like a keepsake of all the history lessons with craft/story pages. Hmmm… My wheels in my brain are turning.
That sounds like a great project Angela – it could be amazing! Let me know if you try it.
Thank you for this. Am a new teacher in this primary school and was lost as to what to do about the soon coming World book Day…
Hope you have a great celebration Susan.
I stumbled on your page and now I have cartwheels turning in my brain due to so many ideas! I really needed this NOW! Thanks!
Brilliant, Idayat. Enjoy Book Day!
I love the great ideas. Looking forward to another exciting WBD 2021. Thanks for sharing your ideas
We are a homeschool family and are so excited to take part in celebrating world book day!! Thanks for all the ideas!
Have a fun celebration Kirby!
Thanks we have bookday coming and I will surely make use of your ideas.
hi, i came across this site today world book day and all still relevant , great thoughts you put together here , thanks , am planning trying some cou[le of ideas
Thanks Tolu. Have a fun day!