Bookish play is simply play that revolves around a book. Engaging in bookish play with children is a great way to foster a love for reading, develop their language skills and spark their imagination. It's not just about reading or flipping through pages of a book, it's about creating an experience that brings their favourite stories to life.
Children can continue engaging in a story or concept in a new way whilst reading and after you've finished. As children grow older you can help them to develop comprehension skills such as retelling, summarising and sequencing the story to know that they are understading what they are reading (or what's being read to them).
Featuring story, Pocket Treasure.
Getting Started
Start by reading a story (you can use any book you'd like)!
They can be ones your children are loving or stories you'd like to introduce them to or discuss a topic within futher. Through play you can discuss concepts in the story or act out scenes which will help children develop empathy, compassion, and understanding and also empathize with characters' experiences and emotions in the story in more depth.
Through storytelling and dramatic play it will spark their creativity and imagination as they think and act like different characters, settings and plots.
You can set up and enjoy these experiences with children both young and old and create them as a scene or as a discovery basket below. When they were younger I often used to have a book on our shelf with a basket of items that related to the story like this one below.
My eldest daughter also loved setting up activities for her sister. This is one she created with some of her favourite stories such as The Very Noisy Bear and The Very Hungry Bear. She put all the books around her sister and paired them with some animals and then retold the stories to her.
I also enjoy setting up bookish play experiences for them. She would often come to me with a book and ask "play with this book" when she was youngers and I would set something up during her nap time for us to enjoy together in the afternoon.
It's always fun to see what you can create with what you have!
Grimm's rainbow, train tracks, Ostheimer animals, playsilks and story The Very Sleepy Bear
Older children may enjoy helping you set these up or doing it themselves. You can discuss topics of books and answer questions that they may have to futher develop their understanding of concepts as well.
Sensory tray with rice, finger puppets and story The Big Book of Blue.
Favourite Stories for Bookish Play
You can use any books you already have but we have also listed a few of our favourites from a few catergories below.
Featuring Animals
Featuring Farm Animals
Books with Vehicles
- Little Blue Truck
- All the Factors of Why I Love Tractors
- Roadworks
- Dig Dump Roll
- The Little Yellow Digger
Classic Books
- A Squash and a Squeeze
- Sing Along Nursery Rhymes
- We're Going on a Bear Hunt
- Where is the Green Sheep
- The Very Noisy Bear
- The Gruffalo
- Room on the Broom
Resources
Shop our favourite stories on the Little Toy Tribe Bookshelf and reach out to us if you'd like a book reccommendation for your little one.
In regards to toys to compliment them open ended toys are always most useful for Bookish play because you can use them to make and be many different things. Below I've listed some of the resources we use most often.
Animal Figurines - We have a combination of both Ostheimer and also CollectA figurines. They are so much fun to pair with their favourite stories!
Peg People as they can be any character you'd like. If your child has a favourite character in a book like the Gruffalo for example you could also print out a picture and stick it to a peg person or peg for it to stand up during play.
Finger puppets also fit well on top of the Grapat Nins or Grimm's Friends as well to stand them up for moveable play.
Playsilks are a great base to create different scenes such as water, grass , mud and the beach! You can also get creative with scraps of material or laying other resources out like blocks in the colours you desire.
Magnetic Tiles can be used to build houses, castles, garages, roads, shapes, fences and that's just a few ideas. They are a fantastic base resource to have to create with.
Blocks are another favourite to build stairs, houses, use as furniture, fences.
Simple things can create amazing things with a little bit of imagination!
Cars and Vehicles are often used to retell stories and also transport characters around. One of our favourite stories is Little Blue Truck. My children love putting all the animals in the back of the truck whilst retelling the story.
Small Blue Truck, CollectA Animals & story Little Blue Truck.
Bookish play x Sensory Play
Don't be afraid to get creative and combine bookish play with sensory play.
Here's are a few ideas!
Hide and Seek
Here I photocopied one of her favourite pages of Hooray for Fish where she loved to point out and name all the fish from Hooray For Fish. I then taped this picture under a ziplock bag full of blue paint so she needed to manipulate the paint around to find the fish.
Sensory Play Tray
Below is a sensory play tray with rice with eggs hidden inside to discover.
Simply choose your base, add a scoop or tongs and enjoy!
A mixture of sand, rice and shells with animals and vehicles featured in the story.
Chameleon Reader
The Chamelon Reader offers a fun and unique way to retell stories read by your child's favourite people... YOU!
After recording your voice to the Chameleon Reader stickers they will be able to listen to their favourite story, animal sounds throughout and learn facts about their favourite animals and places.
There are many ways that you could incorperate it into your Bookish play. Here you can see the Chameleon stickers are stuck to the animals in the basket and the stickers have been recorded with the animal sounds that are made during the book.
If you'd like to read more about the endless opportunities of using a Chameleon Reader head on over to the blog '10 Creative Ways to use your Chameleon Reader' and 'Getting started & using your Chameleon Reader.'
Photos throughout this blog are taken by Little Toy Tribe, @playinginstyle, @1_2_3_play_with_me and @_lets.play.today.