Whether it inspires delight or dread, this year’s Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book Week, which ran from 20 to 26, saw lots of tiny humans and excited teachers donning the costumes of the characters they love.
As gorgeous astronauts, mice, fairies and princesses from Complete Kids Early Learning in Sunbury made their way down Barkly Street last Tuesday, passers-by couldn’t help but smile.
In tandem, led by their teachers, they were full of beans to show off their costumes.
The centre’s early childhood teacher Jennelle Marshall absolutely loves celebrating thee CBCA initiative.
“Book Week provides an opportunity for the children to dress up and share their favourite books, but more importantly, to acknowledge and explore the new Australian children’s books each year that are shortlisted by the [CBCA],” Ms Marshall said.
“Good children’s literature is important from the moment they are born.
“A good book can take you places, teach [you] things, [help] develop and imagination and for early childhood, they are an important took in learning to read.”
The teachers at Holy Trinity Catholic Primary School in Sunbury took up a range of different Book Week activities, including a funny surprise for the kids.
“To launch Book Week, the staff secretly dressed up as ‘Bad Guys’,” Holy Trinity learning and teaching/literally leader Olivia Hodgetts said.
“Just like the characters in the well known Aaron Blabey book, staff wore black suits, white shirts and of course sunglasses and greeted the students in the morning, [much] to their astonishment.
“The students have also enjoyed lining up at the end of snack and lunch, to the music from the Bad Guys movie soundtrack.”
Ms Hodgetts said one of her favourite aspects of Book Week was the new theme announced by the CBCA each year – this year’s was ‘Dreaming with Eyes Open’.
“It enables the school to think creatively about how to include the theme into the planned activities,” she said.
