World Book Day is just around the corner, and it’s the perfect opportunity to get children excited about reading!

At Kapow Primary, we have a range of activities that will help you celebrate this special day. 

There are countless ways to celebrate with your pupils, from using music to explore stories to creating art based on your favourite characters. We’ve shared some of our favourite activities using our schemes. Each one is designed to inspire creativity, encourage reading, and promote a love of literature among children. 

So, read on for fun and educational ways to celebrate World Book Day with your pupils!

Art and design

• Draw your own abstract maps based on a location in a popular storybook, for example, Narnia, The Gruffalo Woods and Hogwarts.
• Design and create a sculpture from playdough of your own amazing creature using inspiration from stories of animals or mythical beasts.
• Out on the playground, use coloured chalk to draw a story map, which you can then follow to retell the story.
• Decorate your classroom using a collage of materials representing your class book.
• Create a collaborative drawing of a favourite book character to display in the classroom.
• Construct a collaborative 3D space of a place described in a book, e.g. Diagon Alley, where each child contributes an element to build an impressive scene.

Design and technology

• Create a meal described in a book, such as fruit skewers from The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Giant Jam Sandwich or worm spaghetti from The Twits.
• Host your own fictional ‘Come Dine With Me’ based on your favourite meals in a book.
• Design and create a puppet based on a book character and include it in your story sack to support storytelling.

Computing

• Make a Stop Motion Animation to present the story of a book you’re reading.
• Write a collaborative story using Google Docs.
• Make a book trailer using iPads to represent your favourite story (alternative version for those schools without iPads).

Music

• Explore Music representing different moods, characters and scenes within a story.
• Identify instruments within a piece of music based on a familiar story.

Geography

• Draw a map of a place described in a book, such as Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and Neverland.
• Have pupils create a map of a notable location from a story, tracing the character’s journey. They should mark key spots and describe the adventures or encounters that happen along the way.
• Children draw a sketch map of a coastal area from a favourite book, carefully adding natural and man-made features as described in the text.
• Plot an expedition route using four-figure grid references or compass points, imagining they’re a character from their book.
• Discuss how and why a book’s setting has changed over time, focusing on land use and natural and man-made features. This encourages pupils to think about environmental changes and human impact.
• Explore how story settings, such as rivers, affect the plot and characters. Discuss how these settings make the story more interesting and help us understand where it takes place.

History

• Make bookmarks with your name or a message in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
• Write a diary from the view of someone during World War 2 – an evacuee, a woman in a new job, or a migrant.
• Create a story or comic about the Sutton Hoo discovery – imagine the life of the person buried, the burial process, or the discovery of the site.

French

• Use French learning to identify features of your favourite story character.
• Describe your favourite fantasy creature from a book in French. Talk about how it looks and what it does using French words.

Spanish

• Read Toto in Spain and take a virtual journey to Barcelona. Get creative by designing a mosaic animal for Park Güell, incorporating Spanish shapes and colours.
• Describe your favourite book character’s outfit in Spanish, paying attention to the colours, styles, and when they would wear it.
• Present your favourite book to the class in Spanish. Explain why you enjoy it and discuss if other pupils have similar opinions about the book.

Religious Education

• Dive into the lesson on the differences between scrolls and books. Discuss how religious texts have been presented and preserved in different formats throughout history.
• Use drama and storytelling to bring the tales of prophets from Christian and Muslim traditions to life. Act out the stories or create dramatic readings.
• Craft an artefact inspired by stories about Jesus. Use creativity to represent significant events or teachings.

Want even more ideas?

• As a class, decorate a story chair with your own images and words.
• Create a quiz about your class book and have pupils vote on the answers.
• Make props and masks to help act out a part of a book.
• Hold a school competition for the best character drawing, with the prize being some books chosen by the children.
• Play a game of character charades, where you act as the book character, and others have to guess who you are.
• Make a giant card book, with each child adding a picture to make it look like an enormous comic book.
• School writing relay – EYFS will write the story’s first page as a class, then pass it on to Year 1. This continues up the school until each class has contributed to it. The final version is then read out during assembly.
• Listen to the soundtrack of a film based on a book and guess what is happening through discussion, drawing or writing your own version.
• Compose a tune for a character from your book which represents their personality.
• Read blurbs of familiar books in French and try to guess which book they are about.

Take photos of you and your pupils participating in our World Book Day 2024 activities! Share them with us. We’d love to see them!

Books mentioned in this post:

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• The Twits by Roald Dahl
• The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
• Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling
• Charlie And The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• The Giant Jam Sandwich by Janet Burroway and John Vernon Lord
• Toto In Spain by Biddy Strevens Romer