Anansi inspired a whole page of writing and drawing!

I came home to the most wonderful surprise tonight:


Last night, I wrote a short assignment list for S. He and I discussed his primary task, writing a summary of Anansi Goes Fishing. (More about the book later...) We talked about how he'd write a sentence or two about the story, draw a picture (with background to fill the entire space), and make a border. My note to him included a diagram of the these features. :-) He listened, and then decided that he wanted me to do this work with him. Well, that meant that we wouldn't get to it until Friday evening.

Lo, and behold! My reluctant writer wrote this lovely summary (all by himself), drew a beautiful picture to go with it, and remembered his border! (He even included a list of characters at the bottom.) Yes, there are some, er, creatively spelled words in there, but I'm more than willing to look the other way on those.

The back story to this book is that S had checked it out of the library, and read it. Yesterday, we put it into our pile of books to return. The library was closed when we got there, so we put our books into the Book Return slot. Except for Anansi. When I asked S about that book, he generously offered to read it to me - right then and there, standing next to the Book Return slot! Seizing the moment, I thought it would be an ideal addition to our Grade 2 work on animal stories and fables, which is where this blog post begins...