Date : July 30, 2018
Book Week is a massive part of the calendar every school year in Australia – and when done right, kids absolutely love it!
Every year across Australian schools, Book Week delights and inspires children of all ages. Teachers, librarians, and other educators develop a range of theme-based activities and competitions to encourage all children to delve into the world of storytelling. This year, the theme is Find Your Treasure. Imagine the wonderful costume possibilities!
Read on to find out what kinds of activities, competitions, parties, and costuming ideas are on offer to encourage children across Australia to get excited about Book Week 2018!
Activities, costumes and treasure – oh my!
Book Week 2018’s theme is Find Your Treasure. The first thing that springs to mind might be pirates, but you can encourage children to be more creative and think outside the box. What does ‘treasure’ mean to them? What do they value most? What books have they ‘treasured’ the most? If they were stranded on a desert island, what book would they want with them?
Check out these fabulous ideas designed to inspire little people everywhere to fall in love with Book Week!
Costumes
All children love dressing up, and encouraging them to dress up like their favourite book character is a great way of getting into the spirit of Book Week. Australian books are a treasure trove of fabulous, timeless characters that generations of children have loved. Check out our previous articles here and here for great inspiration and tips.
There are a whole heap of pirate-related books that children have loved for generations – everything from the characters of Treasure Island to Peter Pan’s Captain Hook would make wonderful costume ideas.
Roald Dahl’s wonderful Charlie and the Chocolate Factory involves a treasure hunt of sorts, with kids engaging in a world-wide search for the elusive golden tickets. Kids can dress like Charlie and carry a fake block of chocolate complete with golden ticket – or they could go as Willy Wonka himself.
Encourage your children or the children you teach to embrace the theme and think of the characters and stories they’ve treasured the most.
Activities
There is a veritable treasure trove of activity ideas available for this year’s Book Week! A scavenger hunt is an obvious but fantastic idea that will get the kids’ creativity and problem-solving skills bubbling. You can use rhyming or riddle clues depending on the ages of the children, and include book-related prizes and decorations.
Encouraging children to read the short-listed books for this year’s Book Week is a must. They can be read aloud during class, and lessons prepared around the vocabulary used, the themes, illustrations and even the genre. Check out this list of fabulous class resources for each of the short-listed books!
You can find treasure or pirate-related activities online and include them in your day-to-day sessions. A great one is this colouring page which requires children to read the sentences and follow the instructions to colour the page. You could also include crosswords, word search puzzles or dot-to-dot activities.
Find your treasure with fantastic bookish-themed activities and costumes for Book Week 2018!
For more brilliant ideas to get kids engaged with reading and Book Week, check out May Gibb’s fabulous articles!
This is a contribution from Librarian Bec – Right now, Librarian Bec’s hard at work at your local library, sharing a passion for reading with little people and big. Bec writes about inspiring little readers and embracing lovely literature.
