This term, I’m Patron of Reading for St. James Church of England Primary School. So far, I’ve done two workshops with the kids, and I’ve been having a blast.

Yesterday’s workshop was on characters. The kids came up with a bunch of Inside Traits (kindness, bravery) and Outside Traits (wearing a blue dress, having two tails.) Then we combined them and made up stories about the resulting characters.

Blackstone is an ancient soldier who has been inside a cave for hundreds of years. He uses his sword to protect the innocent.

When people are trapped in holes, Helpful Snake wraps his body around them and lifts them to safety. (Below him is Josh, who has a secret and likes to dab. His secret is that he’s not as cool as dabbing makes him look.)

Sometimes characters are complex and contradictory.  For example, we made up a butterfly who is both kind and horrible. I asked the class if they knew anybody who was both those things, and two different kids both said “My brother!” So we decided that Butter Fly had to be the brother of one of our other characters.