In the Zen Zone

The penultimate in our short blog series reporting from our summer holiday creative writing club…

Day 3: There was an aura of serenity about the place as our young writers entered to music from a Japanese garden and an oasis of calm, for our Japanese Literary Garden Day.

This began with a series of writing tasks to create small literary pieces. First we looked at Haiku, the ancient Japanese poetry form, the western interpretation of which is a 3-line poem with a strict 5-7-5 syllable count. The children drafted their Haiku and wrote them up on paper lily pads.

The second task was to write an Ode - a poem in praise of something. This focused on an aspect of nature or a season that the children particularly enjoyed, and they wrote these up on mini scrolls and tied them with ribbon.

The last task was two-fold: to write a positive thought on a strip of paper before using crafting skills to enclose it in a paper fortune cookie.

The literary selection was then set aside for safekeeping.

After lunch, creative gardening guru Claire Wilding of Mille Fleurs visited us at the WI, laden with gravels, dried flowers, branches, soils, sand and a glue gun, to help the children create their very own mini Japanese garden with lanterns, bridges, and shrines. It was truly remarkable to see the children’s creativity, brought to the fore by Claire’s enthusiasm and encouragement.

We then brought the whole thing together; the children populated their gardens with their own writing, added a sign with their name in Kanji, and the Japanese Literary Gardens were ready to take home. Don’t miss the last report in our next post.