Book Character Day!

Every year my school has the annual Book Fair set up in our library. This is an awesome fundraiser for the library and a fabulous way to get children excited about books! On the last day of the book fair my school celebrates Book Character Day and my team L.O.V.E.S. it! On Book Character Day everyone (students, teachers, aides, principals,etc) dress up as their favorite book character and we all sit in the hallway and parade around the school showing off our costumes and celebrating books.

A few years ago my team started to notice that students were dressing up less and less which made us very sad. So we decided to help parents out and figured out a way to include the entire class or grade level in dressing up without putting too much work on the parents. I work in a Title 1 school and my parents are more worried about putting food on the table and paying their light bills than Book Character Day. So, thus was born the First Grade Book Character themes....

Our first year we chose the book 101 Dalmations. We had the students bring white shirts and used sponges to add the black spots. The students also made dog ears to wear using sentence strips and construction paper ears. Then the next year we did...

Where's Waldo??? The students yet again brought white shirts and we used A.L.O.T. of red duct tape! Our principals even got in on the Waldo craziness that year!

Last year we each chose a different version of the book "There Was an Old Lady.." I did the Old Lady that Swallowed Some Leaves. I had the kids bring a fall colored shirt and we used the awesome art teacher's cool leaf stamps and stamped leaves on their shirts. Then a few students carried important items for the story such as a shirt, pants, and finally I had a student dressed up as a scarecrow.

This year to go with our school Royal Quest theme, we decided to dress up as different fairy tail princesses. We had Belle, Pocahontas, Princess Jasmine, Cinderella, Mulan, Princess Ada from Bug's Life, and Tiana from Princess and the Frog.  We found our costumes on clearance after Halloween two weeks ago and had our classes dress up as different things from the story. My neighbor Belle actually drew Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts on posterboard then attached it to boxes and had students wear those. They were so cute! I wish I could show you their pictures! I did the story Princess and the Frog because I had to throw my frogs in there! My students wore green shirts and made absolutely adorable frog masks in art with the help of my very fabulous BFF art teacher.

Now looking for ideas for next year..... 364 days and counting!!!

Mrs. Halbardier


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