Don’t leave out the math activities for World Book Day! Use these book-themed math lessons to work right across the curriculum.
50 easy ideas for World Book Day activities
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.
Ready-made Gingerbread Man thematic unit
Download the Play Academy’s ready-made Gingerbread thematic unit and you’ll be ready to lead a fun and creative topic of learning all based around the traditional tale of The Gingerbread Man.
Ready-made Gingerbread Man thematic unit lesson plans
[Read more…]Ready-made World Book Day thematic unit
Download this ready-made World Book Day thematic unit and you’ll be ready to lead a fun and creative programme of literacy, math, crafts and play for a World Book Day celebration.
Ready-made World Book Day thematic unit lesson plans
[Read more…]21 ideas for world book day
Are you going to celebrate World Book Day with your children on 1st March?
It’s a worldwide celebration of children’s books and reading and marked in over 100 countries around the globe.
Books are such a fun springboard in to all sorts of activities, crafts and play. Here are our favourite World Book Day ideas for you to try.
21 World Book Day Ideas for fun with your kids [Read more…]
The best children’s books ever
These are the best children’s books ever – well according to the NurtureStore panel of book critics. Today is World Book Day and to honour the occasion I thought I’d share with you our very favourite books – and see if you agree with our picks. It’s so hard to put together a definitive list of course but these are the books which hold a very special place in our heart.
Dogger by Shirley Hughes is a tale of love, loss and how to be a fabulous big sister. It tells us what happened when Dave lost his favourite toy dog and how big sister Bella saved the day. This book made me cry when I first read it to B, when I was pregnant with L and B was just about to turn into a big sister herself! We haven’t come across a Shirley Hughes book we don’t love and this features her amazing illustrations, depicting a family and school life which is so familiar.
I’m sure you all know Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and it’s in our top picks because it’s the book we especially love to read out loud as it gives plenty of opportunity for great character voices as well as dramatic resonance.
Can You Catch a Mermaid by Jane Ray is a moving tale of a lonely little girl and a very hard decision she has to make. It’s all about friendship and features Jane Ray’s beautiful illustrations. B has a real love of mermaids so this is her top pick and I like it because it can be read on different levels: it has a happy ending and also leaves you thinking about unanswered questions long after you’ve finished reading.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is the first book I ever read to both B and L and so has a very special status in our family. It’s a real classic and a fabulous springboard into learning about caterpillars and butterflies, numbers, days of the week and so much more. I’ve used this book in so many different ways with the children I work with and it just had to be in this selection.
I loved the My Naughty Little Sister series by Dorothy Edwards when I was little and I think it’s a real joy to share a childhood favourite with your own children. Some of the things my naughty little sister gets up to make B gasp, andw e also love the book because some of the stories remind us quite a lot of a little sister we know.
B is now at the stage where she can read chapter books independently and she’s delighting in discovering lots of new-to-her authors. Roald Dahl is a master story teller but I’d forgotten just how well crafted his books are. Fantastic Mr.Fox is the first of his books which B came across and I often find her fast asleep at night, clutching this book in her hand.
So this is our pick of the best children’s books ever. What’s would be on your list?
More World Book Day ideas.