‘People exploitwhat they have merely concluded to be of value, but the defendwhat they love and to defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.’ Wendell Berry Robert Macfarlane quotes Berry in his book Landmarks, drawing attention to the moral dimension of looking closely and naming carefully. We could begin … Continue reading My Place
You may have already found that you need to know more about flowers or birds or slugs or insects to help you identify them. Sometimes the difference between one tree and another is down to the shape of a leaf or the colour of a bud. It can be tricky! In order to use an identification … Continue reading Technical Terms
It is World Earth day tomorrow. Last year we showed you how to make pop-up books to celebrate. This year you could make a map fold book and use it to record your local area. Choose quite a small area -maybe you have a playground or a playing field; maybe you could map out the … Continue reading Map it out
Today's posts inspired by Robert Macfarlane's book, Landmarks, and there will be more to come. Landmarks is about language and landscape. It contains wonderful glossaries and a great deal about the naming and thereby conserving the natural world. Children love to be outdoors and so this is a chance to write outside, to look carefully … Continue reading The Thingness of Things
Are you writing in your journal? How is it going? Are you writing even though you don’t feel like it? Sometimes you just need a way to break into the blank page. Some teachers I know have a collection of sentence starters which children can use to set their writing going. Sometimes it really is … Continue reading I wonder …
I was daydreaming, this morning, about the kind of things that children really love to write. I thought that there is nothing like a clip board -and a list of names. For very young children, writing out a register is the best fun. Then you can go around the class asking an important question like ‘crisps … Continue reading Q & A
This short traditional rhyme is a wonderful invitation to close observation and imaginative invention. It is a list of ingredients to create an animal, and it works through its use of similes. The exciting thing about it for the writer, and consequently the reader, is to find new and surprising smiles. One of the pleasures … Continue reading Belly like a bream
Do you keep a journal? We can find plenty of good reasons for not keeping one -but so many more to encourage you! A journal is yours. You may write whatever and however you wish. Daily writing in a journal is a bit like going for a run, your daily yoga practice, or swimming lengths … Continue reading Journal
My name is Sluggery-wuggery My name is Worms-for-tea My name is swallow-the-table-leg My name is Drink-the-sea. Pauline Clarke Here is a chance for you to make up names. You could make up names for yourself or for an invented, maybe magical, character. Make a list of all the different names you can think of and … Continue reading Sluggery-wuggery
Here’s another playful idea which generates interesting images and allows some experimenting with rhyme if you wish. I was reminded of it during my return to Sandy Brownjohn’s books. You may already know this rhyme: I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail, I saw a blazing Comet drop down hail, I saw a Cloud … Continue reading Peacock with a fiery tail
Writing Box 