Use these easy book-themed activities to celebrate World Book Day 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 2023 World Book Day will be on Thursday 2nd 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.

Download your World Book Day Kit

Save time and teach better with our World Book Day Unit. Download your kit here and you’ll have a set of lessons and activities for World Book Day all ready to go.

The lessons are already planned for you. All you need to do is download the kit, use the bonus printables and you are ready to go!

You and your children will be able to:

:: build a book nook

:: enjoy a variety of reading events

:: talk about books using the printable Book Club Questions that work with any book

:: tell stories with a Story Telling Tin

:: make your own non-fiction book – with bonus printable

:: create a story world for hands-on play and storytelling

:: play book-themed games including book-themed math activities

:: make and share bookmarks – bonus printable included

Click here to get your World Book Day Unit now and you’ll be ready to lead a super celebration of World Book Day!

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR WORLD BOOK DAY UNIT

the easy solution for a fun World Book Day Celebration!

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 some sticker stories

Download your ready-made World Book Day Kit

The first Thursday in March is World Book Day, a day to celebrate books, stories and reading. Download your copy of the Play Academy’s ready-made World Book Day Unit and you’ll be all set to lead an engaging World Book Day celebration with your children.

These lesson plans for World Book Day include cross-curricular activities for all your children:

:: build a book nook

:: tell stories with a storytelling tin or story spinners

:: make your own non-fiction book

:: create a story world

:: play book-themed Guess Who? and math games

:: make book marks

Bonus World Book Day thematic unit printables

The Play Academy’s thematic units come with practical printables that make the lessons more engaging for your children and easier for you to teach.

No need to go searching for printables to accompany your lessons, they’re all included when you download your chosen unit.

In this World Book Day Unit you’ll receive these bonus printables:

:: a set of Book Club Questions for Any Book

:: a cut-out-and-play Goldilocks storytelling kit

:: colour-in Bookmarks printables

How to download this World Book Day thematic unit

You can download this unit along with over 50 more from NurtureStore’s Play Academy.

If you are already of the Play Academy, you can download this unit straight away from our Library here.

If you are not yet a member, find out more and choose your first unit here. Your teaching is about to get a whole lot easier!