Went across to Portsmouth today to visit a lovely little school in the heart of Southsea - Southsea Infants. With the two Year 2 classes we looked at some cartooning basics to help prepare them for creating their own superhero character and, ultimately, their own cartoon strip. Love Girl, Goo Man and Super Squirrel were just a tiny handful of creations to explode onto their sketch book pages.

In the afternoon I was with Year 1 having fun with pirates. The children shared their knowledge of pirates with me so I could draw one (that was lots of fun) and then they had a go at drawing what their versions looked like. Some wonderfully inventive drawings followed, from a pirate covered head-to-toe in scars to a dandy of a captain displaying pink boots and long eyelashes. What was remarkable was the number of children who had memorised, step-by-step, what I’d drawn twenty minutes before and who then went on to reproduce it on paper. Shiver-me-timbers!