If you have made a set of characters from card (see last week’s posts), you are all set to create a drama. You can make a simple theatre (more card) and even some scenery to slot down as a background. Add strips of card to your characters so you can move them on and off … Continue reading On stage!
Read lots. Write lots. There is a real benefit to making freewriting a frequent, even daily, habit. The more you write, the more fluent you become. Confidence grows. And you are likely to find yourself playing, experimenting. Freewriting is for you alone. You can write whatever you wish. It can be freeing in many ways. … Continue reading Writing freely
Ask a writer for advice about writing and they are more than likely to say, ‘Read lots. Write lots.’ When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.Zadie Smith There are all kinds of reasons for reading. The tricky thing, sometimes, is to convince … Continue reading Read lots!
Here’s another use for cardboard, both thick and thin. Create card characters using the thick card from boxes. Cut rectangles and draw your character. If you wish, you can cut the outline of the character, but if you leave them as rectangles, there is space to add a speech bubble or three. Give the character … Continue reading Cardboard Conversations
We have had fun writing and drawing on cardboard. There is usually quite a lot of cardboard around – thin card from food packaging and stouter card from boxes. One of the good things about a cardboard box is that its corners provide an instant hinge. We made simple house books, some cut flat and … Continue reading Cardboard
What do you like to write on? Does it depend on what you are writing? Paper – or screen? Do you prefer plain or lined paper? Narrow lines, wide-spaced, or perhaps you prefer squared pages. Perhaps it depends on what and where you are writing. Do you like loose sheets of paper or a notebook? … Continue reading Paper
Different languages have different words for the sounds that animals make. You may think that bees buzz but in Bengali they bhonbhon, in Japanese they bunbun, in Estonian, summ-summ and Korean they have a choice between boong-boong and wing-wing. Cats say ngeong in Indonesia and in Nahuatl (Mexico) they say tlatzomia. The Scottish poet, Alistair … Continue reading What cats really say
The English language is full of words from all over the world, brought to us by traders, refugees, conquerors; collected by travellers, emigres and empire builders. It is one of the reasons for the richness of the language, and for the difficulty of its spelling. The words we have reflect who we are and the … Continue reading Words you didn’t know existed
I came across a copy of the Gobblefunk Dictionary yesterday. It’s a dictionary devoted to words that Roald Dahl invented and used in his novels, especially in The BFG. There’s a real pleasure in inventing words, and if you are reading a story by Roald Dahl you will have a head start. How about your … Continue reading Gobblefunk
We’re going to keep going with words this week. It is a simple practice that you can weave into your day: first thing in the morning, after lunch, or just before when you are waiting for that bell to ring. You don’t have to write them down. Everyone can just put one word in their … Continue reading Homewords
Writing Box 