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Haiku: The perfect poem in miniature to get kids writing poetry

Perfect three lined poems/ Encapsulating the pulse/ And breath of life. Now. What more wonderful way to introduce children who are wary of poetry than to share Haiku with them. Deliciously short and sweet, even young children grasp the concept…
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Story Cubes: A fantastic gift to ignite a child's imagination

I do so love these Story Cubes. They are perfect to get little imaginations fired up, even from as young as two or three. (My 3 year old always enjoys creating a story after rolling the dice.) A child can tell their own story from start to…
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A wonderful poem to share with nine year old's

The prolific children's writer Allan Ahlberg grew up, by his own admission, with "a fair few clips round the ear, no books and not much conversation." But that hasn't stopped him from writing over 140 books for children, many of which his wife…
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Why is a pen magic? Read this poem with kids and find out

The Thin Prison was written by Welsh poet Leslie Norris and perfectly encapsulates the excitement and magic of unleashing words from a pen. I looked at this today with a large group of Year 4's (in a school that borders Nairobi National Park…
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How to use Monsters as inspiration to get kids writing

This week I worked with a group of Year Three's at Hillcrest School. We had lots of fun playing monster-themed games to get the children thinking about new and interesting ways to describe monsters. Using Ogden Nash's poem The Wendigo as…
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Entry with Post Format "Video"

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Have you ever tried Story Jars to get kids writing?

Story Jars A fun, simple idea to try at home. Children can come up with different people, situations and places and write them on slips of paper. Each child will then pick one paper from each jar and - hey presto - they have the beginning of…
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Magic Box poetry workshop

St.Anne's is a Catholic school in a suburb of Nairobi called Kisserian. This group of kids (aged between 7 and 13) gave up their free holiday time to come back to school for a poetry workshop. We used Kit Wright's wonderful poem, The Magic…
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Halloween Poetry

With Halloween on the horizon, in October I worked with Year 3 pupils at the Banda School to produce responses to James Kirkup's poem 'Who's That?' The children worked brilliantly together to come up with some spooky nouns, adjectives and verbs…