Journals

With all the homework and day-to-day distractions during term time, it's hard to find time for Joe to write his journal. We now aim for at least once at the weekend, and with holiday coming up, I hope to encourage a daily journal entry.

The secret seems to be to keep things as fun as possible, and trying things that there wouldn't be time for in school. The example below, is a type of concrete poem. After a walk, he drew and wrote down some of his experiences.

Joe's journal page

This idea could be taken further by:

1. Go for a walk in a local park, into the country, a garden, or anywhere affected by the seasons.
2. Close your eyes and listen hard to the sounds around you, try and remember them, or write them down.
3. Collect leaves, sticks, pebbles.
4. Bring them home to draw or for collage material, these can be stuck down, written on, crushed, drawn around.
5. Write a list of the things that you saw, smelt, or heard, following the shape of the picture. Or perhaps the words could follow the shape of your walk?
5. PS. Experiment with colours too, using the colours of the season.