World Book Day 2025
19/03/2025
This World Book Day, Pippa’s Poppets decided to do things a little differently…
We always love celebrating the magic of books by focusing our World Book Week lessons on various famous storybook characters, such as Humpty Dumpty or The Gruffalo.
But this year, we introduced them to someone new! We teamed up with Big World of Little Dude to bring the brilliant book ‘Brain Vacation’ to all of our students.
Little Dude is a real life therapy dog who lives in America! His wonderful human, Cara Zelas, who is an early years educator and author, was kind enough to share her book and some fantastic resources with us. It definitely made for the best Book Week ever!
The story centres around Little Bird, who is feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Little Dude comes along to help, offering a breathing exercise, which is fun for everyone to join in with! By the end of the book, Little Bird has learnt how to manage his emotions better. It is a great teaching tool for introducing small children to mindfulness and meditation.
Our pre-school groups, loved learning about the Singing Bowl as their instrument of the week. We listened whilst closing our eyes and feeling our tummies moving up and down. We talked about how the music made us feel calm and sleepy, with some children even noticing the similarity in sound to the Bells, which we learnt about in a previous week. Next, we learnt all about Little Dude! The children particularly liked finding out that he is a real life dog, comparing the photos of him to the illustrations. We then read the story, joining in to show Little Bird how to inhale to ‘smell the flower’ and exhale ‘ahh hummmm’. We talked about how Little Dude was a really good friend to Little Bird by helping him to feel better when he was stressed. Using our scarves, we then made a friendship dance, by each making a dance move for the group to copy. To finish, we made actions for Little Dude’s theme tune, dancing and singing along until it was time to sit down calmly for Bubble Time and say ‘goodbye’.
In our Baby and Toddler groups, they loved that Little Dude is a dog! We sang the classic ‘BINGO’ rhyme and shook our shakers along to ‘Old Macdonald’ to see what other animals we might hear. We read an extract of the story, focusing on breathing, and then used our scarves to move with the Singing Bowl music, stretching up and and down with our breath as it went in and out. Then, of course, it was Bubble Time whilst listening to Little Dude’s theme tune, before hugging Pippa Panda ‘goodbye’.
Here are four fun, hands-on, and engaging mindfulness and meditation activities from Big World of Little Dude for parents to do with their children:
1) Sensory Mindfulness Walk
🌿 How to do it: Go for a short walk together and focus on using all five senses. Ask your child:
What do you hear? (Birds, wind, footsteps?)
What do you see? (Colors, shapes, movement?)
What do you feel? (Sun on your skin, breeze, rough bark?)
What do you smell? (Flowers, rain, fresh air?)
What do you taste? (Bring a small snack like a mint or piece of fruit to mindfully taste.)
✨ Why it works: Encourages presence, observation skills, and connection with nature.
2) Breathing Buddies
🧸 How to do it: Have your child lie down and place a small stuffed animal on their belly. Guide them to take slow, deep breaths, watching the stuffed animal rise and fall with each inhale and exhale.
✨ Why it works: Helps kids develop awareness of their breath in a fun, visual way, promoting relaxation.
3) Mindful Glitter Jar
🌈 How to do it: Fill a clear jar with water, add glitter and a few drops of dish soap. When shaken, the glitter swirls—representing busy thoughts. As the glitter settles, guide your child to take deep breaths and watch it slowly fall, just like their thoughts calming down.
✨ Why it works: Provides a visual representation of mindfulness and helps kids self-regulate their emotions.
4) Body Scan with Yoga Poses
🧘 How to do it: Guide your child through simple yoga poses, focusing on how each part of the body feels. Example sequence:
Mountain Pose (Stand tall, feel your feet on the ground)
Tree Pose (Balance and focus on slow breathing)
Child’s Pose (Relax and feel your breath move through your body)
✨ Why it works: Helps children develop body awareness and relaxation through movement.
Overall, it was a very successful Book Week and all the children loved learning about Little Dude! We will definitely be checking out the other books in the series and highly recommend other teachers to look into Big World of Little Dude’s fantastic Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) program The humanKIND Curriculum™.