World Book Day!
World Book Day!
What is World Book Day?
The World Book and Copyright Day is a yearly event which is held on April 23 every year, to promote reading across all ages. The day explores the joy of reading and encourages young writers to take part in story-writing and essay competitions. The World Book Day was originally organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and was observed for the first time on 23 April 1995.The highlight of this day is to ensure that books are made available in every nation and is accessible to all. For this, the UNESCO and a number of publishing houses come together every year to select a city as a part of their ‘World Book Capital’ programme that promotes the habit of reading books and other book-related activities for a period of one year. Athens is the current city which is nominated for the 2018 World Book Capital and it aims at making books accessible to all, including migrants and refugees.
What can we, as teachers/parents, do for our children on this day?
Children these days are reading lesser and lesser, and focusing more on other activities, most of which revolve around the mobile phones, tablets and television. As a part of the celebrations for this day, here is a list of things that can be done-
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A book reading session can be organised in the school/home/apartment where a parent/teacher can read out stories to children around the age of 6, to develop interest of reading in them. If the reading session is for older children, a child volunteer can be asked to read out the stories.
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A book fair can be organised where children can be encouraged to visit the stall, read and buy books.
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A story writing or an essay writing competition can be organised. The best stories/essays can later be compiled and made into a book and distributed.
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A fancy-dress competition can be conducted where children can be encouraged to dress up as their favourite characters from the books they have read. They can dress-up and read out a few lines from the book their character represents.
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Teachers/parents can take children to an orphanage to encourage them to donate their old books.
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Children can be taken to the public library and introduced to the variety of books available there of different genre.
Have you any such interesting activities planned in your school/home on this special day? Write to us on vibha@greycaps.com
