Lovemybooks is full of ideas for fun, creative, reading activities at home.

We hope that schools and early years settings will recommend our site to parents and grandparents. 

 Lovemybooks has 230 + activity pages  based on great books for children aged 0-11, all with ideas for sharing, talking or playing the story, lots to make and do and find out about.

We have lots of advice for parents on supporting reading at home in our dedicated reading section. 

SHARE lots of great books something old or something new. Read the books aloud to your child. Not sure how to choose books? Here’s what we look out for.

REVISIT books Children love returning to stories they have enjoyed, often lots and lots of times! Encourage children to join in as you read with the rhyming or repeated parts, by being one of the characters or just with the sound effects!   

TALK about books Share favourite characters or parts of the story, talk about what you want to happen next. Find the rhyming words, think about what unfamiliar words might mean. 

PLAY the story Act it out together or make sock or stick puppets to retell the story.

MAKE a mini book To retell the story or draw the main characters.

Unable to visit the library or buy books? We have lots of videos with stories read aloud on our website.  See this example based on Shark in the Park by Nick Sharratt with video and our activities. 

Oliver Jeffers
Harper Collins
Age 3-5

This is a story about friendship and understanding. In it a boy finds a penguin at his door. The penguin looks sad, so thinking it is lost the boy tries to take it home – to the South Pole! This involves a really long journey across the oceans in a rowing boat. During the journey they become good friends. Eventually the boy realised that maybe friendship is what the penguin was looking for after all.

Share the story

Read aloud and talk about the story
Before you start reading look at the cover picture together. Encourage your child to wonder what might happen in this story. Why are the boy and the penguin in a boat on the sea? Read the story aloud pausing to talk about the story and what  might happen next. Good points to stop include:
– when the boy can’t sleep and doesn’t know what to do about the penguin
– when he is wondering how to get to the South Pole

Watch a trailer

See animated trailer here

Hear the book read aloud

Meredith Geeves

Things to make do

Tell the story with puppets
Print out the puppet shapes from the author’s website. Stick them on lolly sticks so your child can retell the story with you.

Alternatively you could make junk models of the boy and the penguin from small cardboard tubes or boxes  covered in glued paper.

Play the story
Arrange cushions or pillows in a boat shape on the floor so your child can climb in. Children could choose a favourite toy as a companion to sail off to the South Pole. Another cardboard tube or rolled up  magazine would make a great telescope for spotting land, ships or danger.

Sing a song
Sing ‘Row, row, row your boat’ together. It’s fun to do this sitting on the floor and doing a rowing action in rhythm to the song. Click here for the words. To listen to a recording of the song click here.

Have fun with floating
Experiment with different plastic food containers to see which makes a suitable boat for a couple of small toys to go on a voyage together. Try floating them in the bath, a paddling pool, bowl or sink.

Make a lost and found poster
Has anyone lost the penguin? Make a poster to see if the owner can be found. Print off the template, so your child can draw a picture of the penguin and write their own message.

Find out more

Read more books by Oliver Jeffers here

* The Way Back Home 

The Day the Crayons Quit

The Moose belongs to Me

How to Catch a Star

The Heart and the Bottle

* See more lovemybooks ideas

Find out more about penguins

The Emperor’s Egg by Martin Jenkins is a good book to read to find out more about penguins.

Kaye Umansky, Nick Sharratt (illus)
Puffin
Age 0-5

This boldly illustrated picture book has a different dinosaur poem on each page. Some of the poems are loud and noisy with lots of stomping and roaring and some are quiet and peaceful. Your child will love joining in with the strong rhymes and making up actions, the striking pictures give lots to talk about as well.

Share the book

Read aloud As you read the book aloud roar noisily with the dinosaurs and whisper for the mouse. Allow time to talk about some of the pages, for example you could look for the dinosaur that is hiding together.

Join in As you re read the book encourage your child to join in with actions, stamping their feet, chomping, and pretending to swish a tail or dive into a swamp.

If you leave gaps when you are re reading the book children can complete the rhymes eg:

Roar, roar, roar, roar! I’m a roaring …………..!

Talk about the book The pictures are so striking it is worth spending time talking about some of them. For example, you could ask your child which page is their favourite, what is happening in the picture and why they chose it.

The picture of the two dinosaurs who are ‘just sitting’ is an interesting one to discuss, look at this together and talk about what you see and think.

Do Some Counting
Count the baby dinosaurs and the eggs and the dinosaurs diving into the swamp

Things to make and do

Play the story

Stomp like a dinosaur – as you walk around the house or garden stomp like dinosaurs saying the rhymes as you go. Wearing big boots for this would be fun!

Sand play – if you have access to a sand pit at home or at the local park your child could re create pages from the book with their toy dinosaurs (or other small toys pretending to be dinosaurs).

Water play – the toy dinosaurs can join your child in the bath and dive in as if diving into a swamp while you repeat some of the rhymes again.

More outdoor play ideas – find a space, or even better somewhere with a gentle slope, so that your child can roll like a dinosaur. Play dinosaur hide and seek.

Make a dinosaur puppet
You can make a simple dinosaur puppet with your child from a fairly long sock. Felt would be ideal for eyes, teeth and spines but you could use other materials such as buttons for eyes and coloured cellophane for spines. Watch the video for more ideas.
If you make a pair of dinosaur sock puppets they could be the ‘best of friends!’

Find out more

Read more books by Kaye Umansky here

This is Jane, Jim

Yo,Ho, Ho A- Pirating We’ll Go!

Read more books by Nick Sharratt here

Titles include:

Red Rockets and Rainbow Jelly

Ketchup on your Cornflakes

See more about dinosaur themed activities here.

Incey Winceys Preschool sets a reading challenge for families

Mick Kingswell, preschool manager at Incey Winceys Preschool in North East London is working hard to encourage parents to share books at home and it is great to hear they are making really good use of the resources on www.lovemybooks.co.uk.

Mick told us about a 10,000 hour fund raising reading challenge they held in July. At the launch meeting they told parents about Lovemybooks, put up posters, gave out postcards and encouraged parents to spend time looking at the website.

We asked Mick how the challenge went:

‘We successfully reached our 10,000 minute reading goal we finally managed 10,211 minutes in total. Our charity target was £300 but to my surprise we made £545 for our local children’s centre and Salvation Army and will enable us to give out 100 or so high quality books to disadvantaged children in the local community.’

He said some parents found the reading challenge tough and not everyone got involved, some gave up after day one. The experience of sharing books on a daily basis was new to a number of parents some of whom admitted giving their child time on an iPad in lieu of a quality story time. However there were some big successes:

‘One or two parents said that they felt closer to their children. One dad mentioned how good it was for him to bond with his child. We see this as a huge success.’

‘The children responded well and were excited to read every day and were keen to tell me how many books they read the day before! One child said “my mummy forgot” and then this mum read twice as many stories that night! We could see obvious improvements in communication, concentration and vocabulary.’

A few parents made comments about Lovemybooks:

“I found the Lovemybooks website to be full of fun activities. We almost forgot to read sometimes because we got caught doing other things and had so much fun. We will check back for new books”.

“We used the website you gave us to look at what books to buy. Some of Jack’s books were too long, which put us off reading”.

Incey Winceys are finding the website useful in their setting as well. Mick told us:

‘We tend to look on Lovemybooks for ideas for activities or games. When we were looking at emotions we read Grumpy Frog , We used the ideas on the website to make frog puppets and used them in emotion role play.  With Elmer  where you suggested creating colourful elephants we went a bit mad and made a giant elephant together!’

‘We have bookmarked the site on the children’s iPads. We use the video links to watch a story at nap time. This has a calming effect and helps children especially those with SEN with their routine.

‘We also use the site for looking at books we don’t have, or for finding age appropriate books and use the ideas on the site to convince the finance people to buy the books we would like.’

Teachers and school leaders – Are you sharing www.lovemybooks.co.uk with parents in your school or setting too? Do let us know if so, we’d love to hear and share your experiences in our newsletters too. Email info@lovemybooks.co.uk.

 Jessica Souhami
Frances Lincoln
Age 3-7 years

This is a bold and beautifully illustrated traditional Hindu tale of Rama and Sita whose bravery and goodness triumphs over a jealous stepmother and the vengeful ten-headed Ravana, King of all the Demons. With help from Hanuman, leader of the monkey army, Rama and his loyal brother Lakshaman escape from the forest, defeat Ravana, free Sita and together return to India. After learning of his father’s death, Rama is made King and rules wisely and well.

The suspense in the story is highlighted by the use of paper cut-outs, dramatising the action like colourful puppets on the page.

Share the story

Read aloud
Read the story aloud, taking time to talk together about the pictures as you do.

Things to talk about
Take time to look and talk about the cover. What does your child notice? What kind of story might it be?

As you read the book allow time to pause for your child to predict what might happen next, before turning the page.

Talk together when your child wants to discuss anything they notice, ask a question or wonder about the story, characters, illustrations or layout.

After finishing the book, share favourite parts of the story and favourite illustrations and talk about why you chose them.

Talk about any morals or lessons from the story.

What would your child tell someone else about this book? 

Things to make and do

Make a stick puppet
Make a stick puppet by using coloured card and either a pencil, paintbrush or wooden spoon. Use it to retell the story, perhaps from the chosen character’s point of view. See here for ideas. 

Make a bridge
Make a bridge for Rama and Hanuman to cross the sea to rescue Sita, using cardboard tubes and egg boxes, sticky tape and glue. Balance increasingly heavy objects on it to test its strength.

Find out more

Find India and Sri Lanka on the world map

Read other books by  author/illustrator Jessica Souhami, titles include:

In the Dark, Dark Wood

Leopard’s Drum

No Dinner!

King Pom

Foxy!

Sausages

Mini Grey
Simon & Schuster
Age 5-7 years

The audience is waiting for the Great Hypno to perform his amazing magic show. But just before the show is about to start an announcement is made; Messrs Abra and Cadabra, two bunnies, will replace Hypno. Abra and Cadabra thrill the audience with incredible transformations and daring feats but what are they up to when they hypnotise the audience and where is The Great Hypno? A funny and intriguing book with a retro feel, the dastardly scheming rabbit duo make great villains. There is lots to spot in the fabulous illustrations and the paper engineering includes several flaps which are fun to open.

Share the story

Read aloud
Read the story aloud – children will enjoy opening the flaps as they listen to the story and enjoy the illustrations.

Look at the illustrations carefully as you share the book a second time, look carefully for what is happening with The Great Hypno and how he escapes.

Join in
When you read the book again children will enjoy joining in with the magic words

Talk about the story

• Share favourite pages, talk about which parts of the story are the funniest or strangest

• Find any unfamiliar words or phrases and talk about what they might mean –you could look them up together eg ‘escapology’ and ‘sleight of paw’, ‘debut’ and even ‘prestidigitation’ (performing conjuring tricks as entertainment)

• Who’s right who’s wrong?

• Talk about what the bunnies did and whether children think they are ‘bad bunnies’? Why might they have done it? Was The Great Hypno right to have blasted the bunnies ‘to kingdom come?’

• What might happen next – can you think up a new adventure for the bad bunnies?

Karen and daughters Leia and Coco comment...

Karen and her daughters Leia (age 6) and Coco (age 8) tell us about the fun they had sharing the book
We enjoyed reading the book together and Leia had lots of fun joining in with the ‘Hey presto!’ parts of the text whilst opening the flaps. We had a good conversation about how magic tricks might be done 'Brenda isn’t really cut in half mummy, because those are fake legs at the bottom’ and why the goldfish was turned into an octopus instead of being made to disappear - we think the magic words were somehow mixed up. We looked up the meaning of new words we hadn’t read before such as ‘sleight’ and ‘cephalopod’  and even watched some footage of Houdini and other escape artists in order to find out more about escapology.

On our third read, Leia’s older sister Coco joined in and the girls dramatised their favourite part of the story, extending it to an impromptu performance of a magic show of their own: ‘Hey Prenda, half a Brenda!’  Inspired by Abra and Cadabra’s amazing magic tricks, Leia and Coco made their own posters for the story. Coco said this reminded her of another book we’d read about magic: Leon and the Place Between by Angela McAllister and Grahame Baker Smith.
  
We had lots of fun reading The Bad Bunnies’ Magic Show and the girls thought that Abra and Cadabra weren’t really bad bunnies at all, they just wanted to have some fun doing the magic tricks instead of hiding in the magician’s hat most of the time!

Things to make and do

Play the story – magic show

Children could pretend to be the performers themselves doing one or two of the acts, dressing up, using magic words from the story or making up some of their own (perhaps not the knife throwing!) You could join in perhaps by announcing the acts in the style of the story.

Alternatively children could act out part of the story or have a magic show of their own using soft toys or by making simple puppets – you could improvise a puppet theatre by using a small table covered with a cloth or pin up a blanket across a door way.

Make a theatre card
Fold each side of a piece of A4 paper (landscape position) in to the centre and crease firmly. Children could decorate the outside as if they are theatre curtains, then inside they can draw characters from the story performing one of their acts

Make a poster for a magic show
Children could make their own poster for a magic show with Abra and Cadabra, the Great Hypno – or their own invented magician.

Find out more

Read more books by Mini Grey
Titles include – follow the links to our activity pages

Biscuit Bear

Space Dog

Toys in Space

Traction Man is Here

Hermelin Mouse Detective

Learn a magic trick here 

Buy here

Duncan Beadie
Templar Publishing
Age 3-7

Big Jim Hickory is a lumberjack with a very impressive beard. One evening he is disturbed by an angry bird complaining Jim has destroyed her home. His (rather unusual) solution is to accommodate the homeless bird in his beard! Unfortunately, the bird is soon followed by a porcupine and a beaver. Life quickly becomes unpleasant for Jim and he decides to take drastic action. He shaves off his beard to create a temporary shelter for the animals and plants more trees to replace the ones he had cut down.

This is an enjoyable and humorous book with a pleasing pattern to the story and a rhythm which makes it great for reading aloud. Through sharing this story children will find out a little about the landscape in the North American Rockies, animal homes, the effects of de forestation and the importance of sustainability.

Share the story

Read aloud
Before you start reading the story talk about the cover illustration and title. Any clues to the setting and characters?  Talk about what children think a lumberjack is.

Read the story aloud
Pause to talk about what is happening when children want to. The picture of the logs floating down the river would be a great point to pause, what might happen next?!

Join in
As you read the story again children can join in with some of the phrases such as ‘TIMBER!’ and ‘chop, choppety, chop’ and the animals’ complaints, you can point to these words and phrases as you reach them in the story.

Talk about the story
Talk about any words which may be unfamiliar eg ‘tenant’ or ‘burly’

How do Jim and the animals feel at different parts of the story? Look back together for clues in the illustrations and the words

How long did the story take to happen? Were some bits quicker than others?

Things to make and do

Play the story
Have imaginary conversations between beaver/bird and Jim the lumberjack; you could role play this with your child or make simple stick puppets of the animal characters to act it out.

Limber up like a lumberjack!
Try some of Jim’s exercises together, you could make up some more of your own too.

Make a shelter
Children could collect together some materials, for example straw, twigs, feathers, grass, wool, fabric or paper scraps to make a shelter for small toy animals.

Print a tree picture
The end papers at the back of the book might inspire children to make a picture of a forest from tree prints. Potatoes make useful printing blocks. Young children will need your help with cutting the potato into a tree shape.

Plant a tree
Collect tree seeds for example an acorn, horse chestnut (conker) or sycamore seed and have a go at planting them. See links below for guidance. If successful, you will need to think carefully about  where to transplant your little tree!

Make pancakes
See here for how to make pancakes together. Talk about toppings, what is your child’s favourite? Maple syrup, or something else?

Sing a song
Sing a song about a lumberjack

Find out more

Find out more about Duncan Beadie.
Also the creator of The Bear Who Stared. Duncan speaks about the background
to The Lumberjack’s Beard here .

Find out how to grow a tree from a seed
See here and here. 

Older children might like to find out more about lumberjacks
What would your child like to find out about lumberjacks?
Look at this webpage together and see if you can find answers to any of their questions

Find out about beavers and porcupines
Find out more about beavers, porcupines and other North American and Canadian animals here.

What are lovemybooks cafés?

Lovemybooks cafes are informal reading workshops for parents or parents and children, led by teaching staff.

Their aim is to support parents in enjoying spending time sharing books with their children using books, ideas and resources on the lovemybooks website.

Here are some top tips to get off to a good start:

• Make sure staff leading the café sessions are very familiar with lovemybooks, our aims to promote enjoyment in reading and our website; how it is organised into age groups or themes, the way the activity pages work and how to find the extra information provided on learning to read and supporting reading.
• Here’s a powerpoint for you to use if you wish
• It can be helpful if one member of staff to take the lead on this, introduces the site to colleagues at a staff meeting and allows time for staff to become familiar with the website and plan their reading café.
• Make sure books which feature on the site will be available for parents to browse during the session and borrow afterwards
• Choose a particular book to focus on during the session and look at our suggested activities and talking points.
• Ensure refreshments are available
• Advertise the session and include the children in promoting it
• Repeat termly

An example lovemybooks session
A half session with parents only and a half session with children present,  based on Hill Mead school reading cafes

On arrival

• Parents enter room, tables set out like a café with cloths if possible and books from the lovemybooks collection relevant to the age group
• If available ipads could be provided so parents could start to browse the site straight away

Part one: introduction

Introduces the lovemybooks website to parents.

Model reading a book aloud and how to talk about it, for example pausing to talk about the pictures or the story. Useful questions are modelled eg which is your favourite page or illustration?

Introduce one of the make and do ideas for example how to make a stick puppet. Talk about how this activity might link to the story you have just shared, for example to tell the story with puppets

Give parents time browse through some of the books from the lovemybooks collections if ipads or laptops are available they could look through the related activities on the site.

Children are then invited to join group and refreshments provided.

Part two: workshop with children

Parents share the book they have chosen with their child reading it to them and talking about it for example sharing favourite pages.

Parents make a stick puppet of one or two of the characters. Parent and child can begin to retell the story with the puppet/s

(Resources for the make and do activity on tables as well as selection of books)

On leaving

Parents take away one or more book and a note, postcard or bookmark with the website information.

Repeat session half termly if possible, build in time for parents to feedback if possible.

Lovemybooks cafes launch at Hill Mead School

We are delighted to link up with Hill Mead School, Lambeth as they develop lovemybooks inspired reading cafes for parents and children.

Deputy Head Becky Lawrence said:

‘At Hill Mead we are setting up ‘Lovemybooks Cafes’ to promote reading at home as fun and creative. Lovemybooks is special because the resources and ideas have been developed for parents. At our launch, our parents were so engaged, they recognised it was a resource made especially for them.’

The Year one launch was really exciting, the room was buzzing with so many interested parents attending to hear how they can use the free resources on lovemybooks to help them and their children have fun sharing books together.

Staff introduced the lovemybooks website to parents who had a chance to browse on ipads, look at some of our books and ask questions. There was lots of interest:

It is really easy to navigate. I am going to have another look when I get home

My eldest two took to reading easily but my youngest hasn’t; this website is really useful with lots of ideas.

Using our activity ideas for Beegu, staff demonstrated ways to talk about a book while reading it aloud, for example by talking about how the characters might feel and having fun reading ‘alien’ words.

Children joined their parents for the second part of the session and enjoyed making mini books , masks and puppets together. One child spoke of his enjoyment saying, ‘I made a book with mummy, she did good drawing.’ http://yearonehillmead.blogspot.co.uk/  Refreshments were provided for parents and children adding to the informal café atmosphere.

This is the first of many lovemybooks cafes planned at Hill Mead with year one planning a follow up and lovemybooks reading cafes in the pipeline for nursery, reception and year two as well.

One teacher made an interesting comment about lovemybooks:  ‘This is such a great idea, why hasn’t it been done before?’