Category: Uncategorized
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A stroll in a green space in the springtime is an ideal opportunity for creative fun – and there’s no upper age limit for these suggestions! Make music… okay, a hideous racket… by blowing grasses. They’re growing tall and strong now – perfect for makeshift recorders – so just make a slight slit in one,…
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Silly fruity-veggie face creation ideas for adults downwards What’s life for if you can’t hit the Pause button once in a while and do something like this? Grab up any fruit, salad or veg you may have handy and magic them into characters. They’ll still be edible afterwards, provided the eyes don’t roll off the…
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Acrostics are pleasing brain-ticklers, with the bonus that completion = poem! What’s more, the first letter of each line is given, so all you have to do is fill in the rest – however you see fit. In case you’ve gone blank about what exactly acrostics are, they’re poems in which the first letter of…
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One of the best things about sunshine is the shadows it produces – the mottled shades, dancing dapples and quirky, crisp-cut silhouettes. Light and shade bring scenes alive. They’re also fun to photograph, so if the sun’s out, get your phone, pick a shadow or two and start clicking. A decorative subject – like this…
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Hello teachers! My poetry workshops for Rec. – Yr 6 are available as ever – online, with timetable flexibility to finetune to your needs. So what’s involved? My sessions are live, interactive, fun and mind-stretching, drawing out children’s creativity and developing their literacy powers. Drama, music, pictures, brain-storming for words and imagery, and sample poems…
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Very happy indeed to be a contributor to the wonderful new poetry book, Shaping the World, 40 Historical Heroes in Verse, chosen by poet Liz Brownlee for Macmillan Children’s Books! The collection is out today, April 1st – yes, April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke: it’s a fantastic truth! Every poem is presented…
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Delighted to have a poem in poet Brian Moses’s Spring mini-anthology: http://brian-moses.blogspot.com/2021/03/spring-sunshine-sunshine-likes-to-dance.html Browse through this rich feast of contributions, including poetry by Brian himself of course, for a springy Sunday and onwards! Here’s mine (inspired by ponies in seasonally buttercup-lit fields in my village) – but do see the other poets’ contributions too: Foal…
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Here’s my poem, ‘A Meal for your Maths Teacher’, Highly Commended in the international YorkMix Poems for Children 2021 competition – just to send a warning out to any over-mathsy teachers out there! A MEAL FOR YOUR MATHS TEACHER If your teacher’s the sort of creature to set a nasty sum, distract her…
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If you were a Giraffe If you were a giraffe, with a drain-long, crane-strong, swing-along neck, would you just eat leaves? I wouldn’t. I’d be a spy. I’d peep over fences ten feet high, and snoop through windows up in the sky, and peer into aeroplanes cruising by, spying all day with my aerial…
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How on earth can you get kids to write quality poetry via a video link? I’m talking about anxious 5- and 6-year-olds, often stuck on the simplest word and unnerved by the unfamiliar term ‘poem’; fidgety 7 and 8-year-olds bursting with energy, and the super-mature at the top end of primary, in…
