Junior & Young Writers: Week 5 [Wild Words] - Mythologies

Hi Writers,

For check-in this week, we started the junior writers group by describing our weeks as a pair

of shoes or boots. A fabulous comparison was a pair of floppy leather boots to describe a

week that's been a flop. We also had blue and white supersonic boots, as the week had

gone quickly, and a pair of Crocs with lots of accessories to represent an exciting and busy

week.

We learnt a couple of new games this week, such as Taxi, where we put one chair in front of

another and had a driver and passenger. The aim of the game was for the two people in the

Taxi to choose and act out a feeling and for their team to correctly guess the emotion. One

example is when Henry. R acted out being hurt when he picked up a tired Henry. J.

The next game was called Listen to Me, where we had three chairs; one chair in the middle faced

forward while the other two chairs were on either side facing the middle chair. We had the

listener in the middle chair and the storytellers in the other two chairs. For this game, the

storytellers both made up a tale at the same time and recited it to the listener; after a time

limit, the listener had to recite whichever story they could remember the most, and that

person won.

After some chaotic fun, we got onto this week's theme, a favourite of mine: mythology!

For our first task, we created our heroes and their backstories. One very unusual hero was an

Amoeba from space who could make anything and whose weakness was grit salt. Next, we

created our monsters, with characters such as 'Cyclops' and a 'Smiler' born from the group's

imagination. We then got creative and drew our heroes and monsters if they were to meet.

During our check-in with the young writers group, we had some invisible boots for a

forgotten week, clunky heeled boots for a week that had been up and down, metal boots to

represent a heavy and challenging week, and fluffy boots thanks to a couple of days off from

school.

We then introduced this group to the two new games. In our Taxi, we had a furious Ava

being driven by an insecure Catherine and a hesitant Berry driving a bored Poppy. During

the Listen to Me game, we learnt the difference between projection and shouting after a very

amusing but noisy attempt at winning. We also set some rules: No singing, shouting, or

touching!

Next, we defined mythology, and Claire recited 'Mrs Midas' from 'The World's Wife' by Carol Ann

Duffy before creating our heroes. A few examples of the imagined heroes in this group

include John the fish, a flower as a hero and an elderly grandma who needs to save her

grandkids.

For our monsters, we met 'Viticia', an infinitely tall, bony, gooey lady, an animal that looks like

a mountain and turns people mad, and a half-human half-snake called Adam, as a

re-imagining of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve.

The group then came up with stories and ideas for how their heroes and monsters would

meet and what problems might be faced. Another re-imagined traditional mythological tale

was that of Beowulf and Grendel, but this time, Beowulf was the bad guy. 'Viticia' nearly

ends the world with a deathly fog. The hero 'Swanna' is banished to the mountain creature

and befriends it, seeking revenge against the humans who wronged her. Aleria, the

grandmother, tries to save her grandkids from the giant bees, who are transporting them to

the afterlife.

We ended our session imagining how cute these giant bees could be and

agreeing we’d all be pretty okay with being taken to the afterlife by these fluffy giants!

More next week

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Junior & Young Writers: Week 5 [Wild Words] - Mythologies