Help children celebrate World Book Day by sharing picture books with them, reading stories to them and encouraging them to read, read, read! Talking to children about books helps them to decide their favourite books and to find their favourite authors. Just seeing an adult picking up a book and looking at it increases a child’s curiosity to find out about what it’s about. I did this the yesterday and within minutes a six year old was eagerly asking me about the poems in the book I was reading. So, we read some nursery rhyme verses aloud together. Here’s one we thought we knew already:
Hey Diddle Diddle
Hey diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the dish ran away
With the chocolate biscuits!
Well – we thought we knew it – but Michael Rosen had changed the words – but we thought we could do better than that and we came up with lots of other ideas! What about:
baked beans
all the pudding
plates
fish and chips
soup
gravy
There are lots more!
Have a try!
(From: The Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems Edited by June Crebbin and book cover illustrated by Nick Sharratt