Last Tuesday I started a new project at a primary school just outside Newcastle. I’m working with thirty absolutely delicious five-year-olds and their lovely teacher.

The project will carry over into 2010 and I will have nine sessions with them in all. Last Tuesday I gave them a word for the day which was ‘gold’ and we had lots of fun finding rhyming words and connected words and I read them the story of King Midas which they loved. I must have been OK because I was awarded two paper stickers, (photograph attached).

We made a poetry corner and I’m really looking forward over the coming weeks to filling their heads and hearts with poetry. There is something really grounding about working with such young children. I hope I will be able to give them a gift, a love, a way of seeing things that will stay with them.

We read limericks including one about a giraffe (I wore my giraffe earrings) and I made up a new limerick for them about a giraffe.

I wonder if they will give me a sticker this coming Tuesday when our theme will be cats.