Spring Haiku

Every month I change up the poems on our flip chart. The only predictable bit is the very first poem, which is Maurice Sendak's, Chicken Soup with Rice, for that particular month. They read with a familiar rhythm and rhyme and they're well loved by the children. We have Sendak's book of poems in both BIG book format as well as the regular little version (it's a mini). There's also a random mix of good seasonal and thematic poems of my choosing as well.

In March, one of the poems was a haiku, which got us thinking and talking about poems that had rules. We explored and played with syllables in words. I introduced more haiku to them and asked them to identify a common theme between them all. Nature. With wet weather in the forecast all week, rain seemed like the perfect topic to focus our own haiku writing on.

We revisited this beautiful book, Raindrops Roll, by April Pulley Sayre, that we'd read during our Sky Inquiry. It's a refreshingly fun and fascinating exploration of rain, raindrops and the water cycle. The stunning photography and descriptive writing inspired the collection of rain words on the chart paper below. We clapped out the syllables of the words before setting off to write our own three line poems, with 5 -7 -5 in mind. The goal was to have our poems paint a picture with words. Results, impressive. Collaboration, equally as impressive. Enthusiasm and interest, beyond impressive.

We stopped to share our poems as we wrote, to inspire ideas in one another. Some completed one, while others wrote multiple haikus. They helped each other when they got stuck and needed to revise or rewrite a line to lose or gain a syllable. It really was a group effort. In the afternoon, after a quick introduction to Pic Collage (love), they set off to publish their haiku poems and upload them to Seesaw. Let me just say, boy can this group can navigate an iPad like I've never seen. They're quick to learn and creative in their efforts. Here are a handful of their haikus.