I is for ish

I came across a perfect book for the letter I in the a-z blog challenge. ish written and illustrated by Peter Reynolds. (Candlewick)

“What’s an ish?” asked the first graders. We soon found out as we learned about Ramon who loved to draw everything – including a trash can,  and everywhere – even when perched on the toilet! One day, however, when Ramon was busy drawing, his older brother looked at his picture , laughed and said, “What is that?”

Ramon was haunted by this statement and though he tried, he just couldn’t seem to make his drawings look right. He crumbled them up and eventually stopped drawing. His sister secretly took the drawings and Ramon was surprised to learn that she had hung the drawings up in her room. She liked them! When he pointed out what was meant to be a vase of flowers didn’t really look like a vase of flowers, his sister answered that it looked “vase-ish.” This encouragement lit the artist spark in Ramon again and he happily resumed drawing ish art.

We had quite the discussion on how words said carelessly can hurt and how encouraging words can help. The students happily began to draw -ish pictures. There wasn’t one “I can’t draw” because they all realized that they could easily make “-ish” art.

Here are a few of the students’ “ish” drawings. I especially like the way Thomas signed his name as “Thomas-ish.”

This poetic book is accompanied by simple line drawings that perfectly illustrate the story. This is an important book that will help to develop encouragers.