The start of March saw our three primary schools at St John’s, Thornhill and Timothy Hackworth celebrate World Book Day in style.
Starting back in 1995, World Book Day is now a globally recognised day across over 100 countries that promotes books and reading to our young people.
With the school’s help, the day encourages children to see reading as entertaining, social and a fun thing to do.
Designed with fun in mind, the day is a bid to try and get our children to grow up with a life long love of reading and to relish all the benefits that it brings.
From fairies to frogs and everything in between, to comfy pyjamas and onesies, the children of Shildon were seen flooding their schools dressed for the occasion to celebrate World Book Day with vigour.
They spent the day across the schools diligently working on displays that included witches potions and poems, taking part in competitions, competing in book cover treasure hunts, and listening to their teachers favourite books as they finished the glorious day supping on hot chocolate and nibbling on biscuits revelling on the day’s fun activities.
At St John’s, Deputy Headteacher, Andrew Kay said: “As well as the children, we also had quite a few staff reading their favourite stories and children could choose which group to go to.
“Both children and staff really enjoyed celebrating books and reading.”
Headteacher at Thornhill Primary School, Samantha Overfield said: “The theme this year was ‘Read Your Way’ and our children decided they wanted to read bedtime stories in pyjamas with hot chocolate.
“Our day began with a ‘Guess the teacher’s favourite bedtime story book quiz’ and then we had a scavenger hunt around the playground looking for book covers.
“There was a fun library session with special stickers and we made our own bookmarks.
“Finally, throughout the day, each class worked on a Julia Donaldson book, creating writing and artwork ready for our whole school display.”
At Timothy Hackworth School, Headteacher, Lynn Boulton said: “Everyone at Timothy Hackworth Primary had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day this year.
“As part of our celebrations, we invited children and staff to come to school wearing some warm and cosy pyjamas!
“It’s a good job we were all wearing pyjamas, as we curled up with a book and drank some hot chocolate with marshmallows at the end of the day – our very own school special ‘bedtime story!’
“This year, as our whole school World Book Day school competition, children had the opportunity to enter the ‘mashive’ potato character design challenge.
“Children had to take the humble potato and choose a character from a book and mash them together.”
Our headteachers from all three schools wanted to thank the parents for their dedication and fantastic effort with costumes and their children for supporting such a worthwhile cause.
Shildon & District's local community newspaper.
