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27 April 2024

Posted by Sukie & Claire

Junior & Young Writers – Week 2 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Dreams

Hi Writers!


This week to continue our ‘Writers’ Inspiration’ theme, we discussed Dreams.


As usual, we started out with our check-ins and shared our weeks as dinosaurs! We had a huge range of dinosaurs across both the Junior and Young Writers groups, including a stegosaurus, a T-Rex, a megalodon and a kaprosuchus. Berry even had a T-Rex that had been squashed by a Diplodocus after a week of SATs practice, and Poppy’s week had been a dinosaur extinction event while her friend was away.


In our reading check-ins we had a lot of Roald Dahl, from ‘Mathilda’ to ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’, some poetry and a continuation of ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’.


We talked again about our collaborative agreement for the workshops and agreed on the three rules:

1. Share respect – both for ourselves and each other. This looks like: no self diss; no dissing others’ work; listening when others are sharing their work

2. These workshops are not school and there are no teachers or tests – we’re all here to learn!

3. Have fun and have a go!


In each session we played a game of Buzzy Bees before getting into our first exercise: writing about a dream we’d had recently. We each took some time to write a list of recent dreams and nightmares and to have a go at writing about one or two of them, because… there is a new competition open! 


Once Upon A Dream is now open, seeking submissions from anyone around the ages of 7-12 (older or younger welcome too) on the subject of dreams. The closing date is 24th May.


[Once Upon A Dream 2024 | Poetry Competition. Ideal for 7-12. check out the website for details and to enter: www.youngwriters.co.uk]


We read some examples from previous winners, including ‘My Washing Came Alive’ and ‘My Magnificent Dragon and I’, and got stuck into our next exercise: making Dream Jars. We each drew a jar in which to keep our dreams, and wrote poems into them.


Evelyn’s had a great opening: ‘I might be an explorer…’ while Evan’s dark take on nightmares was powerfully started off with ‘Nightmares take over your dreams’ and Hamish’s contained the fantastically chilling line ‘Holiday for a nightmare, on a cruise through your little bloodstream’. Berry wrote a spooky acrostic, ‘My Worst Dream’, including the line ‘haunting the dead’, while Poppy wrote a complex and surprisingly heartwarming poem about a frenemy.


We closed out our sessions with another round of Buzzy Bees and some one-word stories.


Don’t forget: The Winchester Poetry Festival’s Young Poets Competition has opened! The

theme is ‘Our World, Our Planet’, and the task is to write a short poem (no more than 14

lines). This is being organised by Hampshire Cultural Trust, so it is open to anyone living or

studying in Hampshire (that means if your school is in Hampshire you can apply, even if you

live across the border). There are three age categories: 4-7, 8-11 and 11-16, and the

winners will receive a National Book Token as the prize. The closing date is Wednesday 31 st

July at midnight so we will definitely be setting some time aside during the summer term’s

Junior and Young Writers workshops to develop pieces for this competition.


Our Junior and Young Writers groups run every Saturday during termtime at the Forest

Arts Centre in New Milton. To sign up, just head to the Forest Arts website (it’s free!). Junior

Writers is for ages 7-10 and runs from 09:30-11:00, and Young Writers is for ages 11-14 and

runs from 11:30-13:00.


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