It is another day for playing with words, for making them up, for creating new sounds. Here’s a link to a poem by Edwin Morgan called ‘The Loch Ness Monster’s Song’. You can find it at the Scottish Poetry Library website. https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/loch-ness-monsters-song/ Edwin Morgan imagined the song of the Loch Ness monster. He made up … Continue reading If we could hear things sing.
Find a photograph from somewhere around your house. You might have a physical photograph or it might be on a computer or phone, it doesn’t matter. Now, think really carefully because I want you to write in as much detail as possible about everything that happened up until the moment that the photograph was taken. … Continue reading One moment please
Take Away the A is an alphabet book with a difference. It really is a game to play with words. How does a word change if you take away one letter? “Without the A the beast is best.” Michael Escoffier and the illustrator Kris Di Giacomo have had fun changing words and drawing a picture of … Continue reading Take Away the A
It feels like a very long time since I’ve been in anyone’s home other than mine. I’ve learnt that it is very possible to be homesick for other people’s homes! But inside my head and in my writing there are lots of familiar places that I like to visit. One of my favourite picture books … Continue reading Houses
Last summer, at our book festival, our writing club had fun with this rhyme. Each line in the traditional rhyme begins with a number, from one to twelve, and all the words in that line begin with the starting letter of that number. One old Oxford ox opening oysters.Two toads totally tired of trying to … Continue reading One Old Oxford Ox
Lots of streets are lined with red, white and blue in celebration of VE Day. It's gotten me thinking about colours and how they can be so meaningful. I wonder if we could write a poem about colours, with a specific person in mind. Someone who we know really well. What are the colours that … Continue reading Colours
Today’s post hides a special treat for people who love making things from paper – and a new fold up pocket book which could also hide some special memories, even some secrets. The fold up pocket book is a slightly more sophisticated form of the zigzag pocket book which you used to collect characters for your … Continue reading Fold Up Pocket Book
A little technical challenge today. You need something to write with and something to write on. We’re going to do five minutes of freewriting about what you did yesterday or this morning; describe in as much detail as possible. Write in first person, using ‘I’ and ‘we’. Try and find something to time yourself. Go! … Continue reading Points of view
Today we challenge you to create one, two, three, or even more characters. We have photographs of the things we found when three characters turned out their pockets and bags. Who can they be? Look closely at the photographs and see what clues you can find. Who would carry such things with them and what … Continue reading Whose pockets?
Sometimes the best ideas for writing come from drawing. When you start drawing you find that words start popping into your head and suddenly you've built a whole picture, a whole story. I've been reading a book called 'Flights of Fancy', which was actually a present from Jeni (she's very good at choosing books). There … Continue reading Shape game
Writing Box 