This morning, I had my Virtual Writers Group for homeschoolers. There are two regular participants in this group, each with their own way of writing a story. One of them takes the prompt, writes something quickly, then disengages for the rest of the session.
This week, I decided to mix things up and run one of my favourite workshops – How to Create a Dragon.
This is one that I first ran when Lizzy’s Dragon was published and I’ve run it a few times since. It’s always a lot of fun and I love learning about the dragons the kids create.
The first part of the session is planning their dragon. We discuss various dragon’s they’ve heard of and how awesome they are, then they move on to creating their own dragon. The key here is the dragon needs to be one they have created, not one they’ve seen on TV or read in books.
Once they have their dragon, it’s time to write a story that includes the dragon. It can be from anyone’s point of view – the dragon, a person, or someone else.
This session had the participants engaged and some fantastic dragons were created, including one that chased the young writer’s brother to steal his shirt to sleep on!
One of the things I’ve found I’m good at is identifying the needs of the kids and meeting them where they’re at, and creating programs that appeal to participants no matter where they are in their writing journey.
Everyone had fun this morning. I’m starting to plan the session we can have next week. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
If you want to find out about Virtual Writers Groups for young writers, click here.
