Junior School World Book Day activities inspire thought-provoking discussions
Junior School pupils marked World Book Day by taking part in a wide range of creative and thought-provoking activities.
Nursery’s focus story for the day was ‘The Sea Saw’ by Tom Percival. The boys and girls loved the story and it prompted lots of talk about how teddy and Sofia were feeling when teddy fell out of Daddy’s picnic bag.
During the day, the children decorated a biscuit in the shape of a teddy bear, created shimmering fish and drew a picture of their own ‘snuggly’.
They also made sandcastles and topped them with a sand flag, created a beach scene with play dough and visited their fish and chip roleplay corner. With this in mind, the boys and girls enjoyed a lovely surprise at lunchtime – a picnic fish and chips meal wrapped up in newspaper followed by an ice-cream – the same lunch Sofia enjoyed in the story when she was at the seaside.
Year Three children were mysterious, sporty, colourful, stripy, exhilarated, freezing, royal, agile, happy, nocturnal, evolving, calm and unkempt during World Book Day!
They enjoyed the story ‘The Invisible’, also by Tom Percival, and considered the many reasons they should feel gratitude. They thought about the main character, Isabel, and why she was sometimes sad but at other times, happy. The boys and girls reflected on their own feelings and wrote some creative sentences to describe a scene that demonstrated those feelings.
Year Four enjoyed exploring ‘The Invisible’ too and talked at length about the issues raised in the book – focusing especially on poverty and gratitude. They talked about things they sometimes take for granted – things that other people, like Isabel in the book, don’t have access to because their family can’t afford it.
As one of their activities, each class created a ‘Gratitude Jar’ and decorated it with uplifting pictures as well as writing a note explaining what they have to be grateful or thankful for. The girls and boys decided to share these notes together every week. They also discussed the emotions raised by the story, focusing on Isabel and her feelings at different points through the story.
The writer, Tom Percival, describes how ‘the city looked exactly how Isabel felt – cold, sad and lonely’. The children discussed how they can show their own feelings through each scene and chose some different emotions to illustrate – including anxious, worried, confused and excited. The pupils had some fantastic discussions about different emotions and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to participate in activities and discussions linked to the book.
At the end of the day, Year Four Make-It Club continued the book theme by making paper origami bookmarks. They practised folding the paper carefully before designing their own in the shape of different animals.
Year Five started their celebrations off with an adjective ‘catwalk’ where each one of the children acted out their chosen adjective for the class to guess. They then went on an ‘adjective hunt’ within the class, collecting as many effective words as they could. An extra challenge was to then find out the adjectives chosen by the teachers in upper KS2 throughout the day – the children had to know the definitions and correct spellings to earn house points!
Year Six were busy rehearsing for their show on World Book Day but they still found time to tell each other – on stage – about their adjectives and how their costumes related. A range of fabulous adjectives were represented in all manner of creative costumes, including Ingenious represented by Camille D dressed as Einstein with the famous equation E=MC2 in her pocket. There was also Cantankerous, aptly represented by the Big Bad Wolf in ‘Little Red’ by Eleanor H.
The children were challenged to learn five new adjectives, along with their meaning, by the end of the day and it was a great way to expand their vocabulary for reading and writing!
