I ran my first poetry workshop at my son's primary school last week and it's hard to say who learned most – me or the five and six year olds!

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The afternoon went simultaneously worse than I had hoped (for that age some of my plans were way too ambitious) and better than my worst fears! Actually, I really enjoyed it and was very impressed by the work the six of them produced. I have also learned a lot ready to put into practice this week!

Meanwhile my 'no way am I going to do poetry' son has been giving me lessons in weasel words! His reading is really coming on but he has a tendency towards becoming distracted and is always happier guessing at word than sounding them out. As a result he frequently mixes up 'that' and 'what' and 'then' and 'when'. What ( not that! ;-)) I've learned from this confusion though is how rarely interchanging the two really seems to affect meaning. A great thing for me to remember when editing my own poetry!