March 6th is World Book Day, a day designed to promote reading for pleasure and it is celebrated in over 100 countries worldwide.

By reading books you not only enjoy the stories (hopefully!) but also stimulate your mind and creativity and improve your vocabulary. Books open our eyes to language and words and children find long and unusual words fascinating. There are some truly wonderful words that I have read in books and one of my favourites is ‘soporific’ which means a tendency to induce drowsiness or sleep. I first came across this word in Beatrix Potter’s ‘The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies’. The book starts:

‘It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is “soporific.” I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit. They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!’

To celebrate World Book Day on 6th March we have lots of fun and exciting activities for children including; exploring a library (did you know that there is a library of smells in France?), describing a character’s backstory, writing about their favourite book and author, designing book covers and describing and illustrating their World Book Day costume. We also have a page of colourful bookmarks to print out on card.

World Book Day Resources