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02 March 2024

Posted by Sukie & Claire

Junior Writers – Week 7 (The Art of Writing) – Picture Prompts

Hi Writers!


In this week’s workshop we played with Picture Prompts!


During our check-in we described our weeks as a colour.

  • Marissa described her week as green and orange (happy and exciting) versus blue and yellow (not so good) due to a cancelled netball match
  • Hamish’s week was a greenish blue – tired at the beginning but happy and energetic now
  • Evan said his week was blue as Cubs was cancelled and he’d been sick on an exciting story writing day at school
  • Indie described her week as brown and boring
  • Claire’s week was cobalt blue after her visit to a relaxing spa
  • Sukie said their week was octarine, the colour of magic in Terry Pratchett’s books, because they’d had lots of energy and there was a lot going on


In our reading check-in we found out we’ve mostly been continuing our books from last week

 Indie: ‘The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe’

 Marissa: ‘A Place Called Perfect’

 Hamish: ‘Bunny Versus Monkey’ and ‘The Phoenix’

 Evan: ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’

 Sukie: ‘Dorset Up Along and Down Along’

 Claire: ‘The Witches of Vargo’


This week we also did a writing check-in to see what everyone had been writing recently, and found

out that Indie had been working on a report on the River Nile; Evan was writing a piece inspired by

‘Escape From Pompeii’, and Marissa was partway through a non-chronological report about the

venomous lizards in ‘Holes’.


Next, we all picked a ‘character’ from one of the magazines Claire had gathered and spent some

time making a character profile for them. Claire gave us the setting of an art gallery, and we each

told the story of how our character had wound up there. We looked in the magazines again for an

art piece our characters might each be looking at, and described them using all the senses and the

feelings they evoked, before Claire gave us the next step: our characters got sucked into the gallery

paintings! Everyone described what the world they had been pulled into was like, and we took turns

sharing our stories:


  • Evan: Salvador Dali’s adventure into Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond’
  • Marissa: Diamond’s escapades with her friend Katie
  • Hamish: A Choose Your Own Adventure. You are a pangolin waking up in an art gallery…
  • Indie: Georgie O’Keefe visits the Louvre

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone next week!


Don’t forget, the Shaftesbury Tales writing competition has opened! Open to writers living in Dorset

(so that’s at least some of you!), it has age categories of 11 & under; 12-16; 17-19; 25 & under, and

‘open to all’. It’s a community project with a procession from Corfe to Shaftesbury, performing the

tales of people living in the Dark Ages in villages along the route. 


Please do spread the word and submit something – if you are looking for some extra eyes on your work, do come along to the Junior

(7-11) & Young (11-14) Writer workshops at Forest Arts, New Milton. 


Just as a reminder, we run on Saturday mornings (09:30 for Junior Writers and 11:30 for Young Writers) and you can sign up by

contacting the Forest Arts Centre directly, or come along and we can add you to the list!



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