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.

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…

behind a sofa

in a bookcase

in a cupboard

on a boat

made from pallets

on a landing

in a tree

in the forest

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

like Goldilocks

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 The Tiger Who Came to Tea

Be the Big Bad Wolf 

Be an elf for the shoemaker

Be Ottoline

Be The Cat in the Hat

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 your own bookmarks

Make a Wild Thing mask

Encourage children to write books of their own

With a non-fiction book printable

Make a Zig Zag book

Draw your own graphic novel

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

Write sticker stories