Celebrate National Sock Day

For some reason National Sock Day is coming up on Dec. 3, so let’s talk about some ways to celebrate at home or in the classroom.

Of course first off you need to declare it a silly sock day, and while mismatched socks are a classic for silly sock days, the point of National Sock Day (such that it can be said to have one) is to celebrate the pairs of socks that have stuck together.

Kids can design their own silly socks with this simple printable sock from My Cute Graphics, or use the sock coloring pages from Craft Corner DIY. It would be lots of fun to decorate the classroom with everyone’s silly socks!

The first sock-related book I think of is Fox in Socks, which is always fun to read aloud. Two Pink Peonies has a more Seuss-style printable sock if you like that better. Simply Love Coloring has coloring pages to go with the book. Your kids can sort rhyming words with this printable from Literacy Learn (I had to read the post to realize the words we’re rhyming with are fox and bricks).

Print up a bunch of colorful socks from My Party Design, hide them around the classroom/house and have kids find them and make pairs. Or do this with your mismatched socks and just go on a sock hunt! The Aristan Life has another printable sock matching game and I love that she added hanging the matched pairs on a clotheline (yeah for fine motor skill development!).

And if you’ve got real socks handy you can make some crafts with socks. Making sock snowmen is an annual tradition at my daughter’s school and you can learn how to make them from Art Beat. Or make this cute inchworm from an old sock with instructions from Woo Jr. Of course you can also make a classic sock puppet with this tutorial from Kids Activity Zone.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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