Celebrating World Book Day

World Book Day is an annual celebration of the written word that takes place on April 23 (the UK celebrates in March, which makes it not quite a world day, but still). This day was chosen because it was the day Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare died.

April 12 is also Drop Everything and Read Day, and the week of May 6-12, 2024, will also be Children’s Book Week, so you can use these ideas for those celebrations, too.

It’s fun to celebrate books in the classroom and at home any time, but this day is an especially good excuse to read, write, illustrate and talk about books.

Here are some ideas of things you can do in the classroom or at home to celebrate World Book Day:

Dress up as characters from books. There are so many great costume ideas out there but here are a few roundups to get you started: Crafts on Sea | Clean Eating with Kids (get the Diary of a Wimpy Kid printables from them) | Finding Myself Young | Desert Chica
Print and color or otherwise make bookmarks. I have a collection of printable bookmarks to color, and another one here, or you can get out your art supplies and have kids design their own. And if you want to make a big activity of it, you can even get kids to stitch their own bookmarks.
Design a reading fort. If you have room in your classroom or house for a dedicated reading space, you can actually make it, or just have kids draw a design for their own ideal reading space.
Write a book. You can make books out of a piece of paper with these instructions from Instructables, or use journaling paper with space for a drawing (you can download lined pages with space to draw from Paper Trail Design).
Show and tell or book tasting. Depending on the age of the kids, have them bring a favorite book from home to talk about, or write about a favorite book to share with their classmates. More on how to do a book tasting here.
Read books! If kids bring books from home they can share those, or pick from your classroom books. If the weather is nice you can read outside, or try something else fun like turning off the lights and reading with flashlights.
Host a book swap. Kids can bring books from home they aren’t reading and swap for others they might be interested in. Books that don’t get picked can go in the classroom or school library or be donated to a Little Free Library.
Go to the library. Speaking of libraries, if your family hasn’t visited your local library in a while, take a trip there. Or do a tour of local Little Free Libraries if your town has a lot.

If you celebrate World Book Day or any of the other upcoming bookish holidays, I’d love to hear what you do!

[Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay]

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

Have you read?

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