15 June 2024

Posted by Sukie

Junior & Young Writers – Week 8 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Cuteness

Hi Writers!

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

As we had some new writers with us this week, we started out with some introductions and

included a couple of facts about ourselves:

 Indie likes writing poetry and illustrating

 Tabitha likes drawing, writing haikus and helping people

 Evan loves writing science fiction

 Noah enjoys drawing

 Sukie loves science fiction, folklore and mythology

 Claire is passionate about poetry and nature and is a little bit witchy!

 Berry loves writing poems

 Daisy likes writing fantasy

 Catherine enjoys writing dark fantasy and science fiction

We talked again about our collaborative agreement for the workshops and went through 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 our check-in we shared our weeks as an item of clothing:

● Indie: a tie-dye sweatshirt – lots of different things and colours going on

● Evan: a belt, long and with lots of dots on it. A long week that felt stretched out with

all the different things he had to do

● Tabitha: pricey denim jeans – lots of ups and downs, and an expensive week

● Claire: PJs – a snuggly week due to illness

● Sukie: a stretched-out jumper from being washed in a machine when it shouldn’t be

● Noah: a week of hard work

● Berry: a very colourful scarf – a mad week

● Poppy: a soft, billowing blouse – a very chill week

● Catherine: an old, grey hoodie you keep because there’s no reason to throw it away

● Daisy: a crazy-coloured tie-dye shirt – mad week

We had a great deal of variety in this week’s reading check-in, from Enid Blyton’s ‘The

Faraway Tree’ and Michael Morpugo’s ‘Why The Whales Came’ to ‘Normal Rules Don’t

Apply’ and ‘All the Men I Never Married’. We also had ‘The Lottie Project’ by Jacqueline

Wilson, ‘Heartstopper’, ‘Skulduggery Pleasant’ and Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’.

We started our sessions out with a few rounds of everyone’s favourite game, Buzzy Bees,

before settling in to discuss… what is cuteness anyway?

Indie started us out by including dragons, dinosaurs, swans and Stitch from ‘Lilo and Stitch’.

Noah suggested cats and their big eyes, and Tabitha added otters and the way they eat.

Evan said rabbits were cuter because of their fluffy texture, and Poppy and Berry both

agreed that animals being silly were cute, and cuteness could also be the feeling when you

see something cute and want to squeeze it – that cuteness aggression response!

We read Isabelle Galleymore’s poem ‘Examples Include Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go

On”’ and all had a go at drawing the toy keyring with the kitten’s face before embarking on a

‘cute items list’.

Everyone had some great suggestions, including little baskets, a tiny candle in a tiny cup, a

bunny, a soft blanket and miniature glass bottles. For our main exercise, we each chose an

item and a place where it would not belong, and wrote an exploration of how it got there and

what the journey had been like.

Don’t forget:

The Winchester Poetry Festival’s Young Poets Competition has also 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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Junior & Young Writers – Week 8 (Writers’ Inspiration) – Cuteness