Try to find where different farms are in your local area. What crops do they grow? What animals do they look after? Look at the pictures of the farm at the start and end of the book. Can you describe how they are different? Love it or hate it, World Book Day has become a firm favourite dress-up day for children. We’ve collected oodles of some of the best ideas around for you. Take a peek at our follower submissions and prepare for the urge to loot the airing cupboard of sheets and the craft cupboard of glue and scissors as you endeavour to create your own masterpieces and creations from your children’s favourite books. Identify the rhyming words used throughout the book. Can you make your own rhyming dictionary, adding other rhyming words for the ones found?

Think about what stealing means and why it is wrong. How would you feel if someone stole from you? What happens to people who steal things from others? An old classic that often gets forgotten about, why not dress your child up as some of the world’s most loved characters from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. Choose from Badger, Ratty, Mole or Mr Toad and have a jolly old time this World Book Day. It’s certainly a more unique idea than the hundreds of Willy Wonka’s and Mary Poppins that will enter the classroom! This fantastic book will inspire little girls everywhere whilst teaching them very important moments in history. It’s a very unique world book day costume idea, and your little one can dress up as whoever they choose. Why not try a Victorian Suffragette? Or a DIY Frida Kahlo or Coco Chanel? There’s just so many influential women to choose from! Gather lots of leaves and try to arrange them to make a picture. Look at the work of Andy Goldsworthy to find more examples of how nature can be used to make art. Use these as inspiration to make your own.Can you sort the animals in the story using Venn or Carroll diagrams? Which ones have two legs? Which have four legs? Which ones have a beak or a nose? How many other ways could you sort them? Your little one might love the three movies, but did they know it started off as a book? Cressida Cowell wrote 12 How to Train your Dragon books, and created The Hidden World. Your little one can dress like any of these characters and practice their escape of the hidden world. Julia Donaldson says: “In the last Ladybird story, I had ruled out the thieves returning to the farm, so I needed a different setting this time around. I wrote What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday while on a book tour in South Africa and the animals I saw there gave me the idea for the new adventure. I was excited when I discovered that the Royal corgis are called Holly and Willow, as I had already written a lot of the story and needed rhymes for ‘golly’ and ‘pillow’ - it seemed meant to be!”

Think of some speech bubbles to show what the ladybird might be thinking at each point in the story.

Awesome World Book Day Costume Ideas

Create a simple model of the farm and use some programmable robots (e.g. roamer, remote control vehicles) to move around it. Could you decorate the roamer so that it looks like the ladybird? Look at the adjectives that are used to describe each animal. How many other adjectives can you think of to describe them? Use the animal posters (see Resources below) and write adjectives on them.