Haiku

A few Fridays ago we spent our language arts time creating poems called Haiku. As soon as I spoke the word 'poem', I heard protests and deep guttural groans. (The boys have also become adept at giving facial gestures that make them appear temporarily disfigured. I choose to ignore most of these responses most of the time.) I explained there was no rhyming required and they perked up a bit.
Isaac has the rhyming talents in the family, but the older boys consistently struggled with that concept. Go figure! It's a hoot to listen to Isaac come up with a rhyme for any word you give him. At times unbridled 5 year old rhyming can be dangerous, but mostly it is entertainment for us.
Haiku (the Americanized version) has a syllabic pattern (1st line - 5, 2nd line - 7, 3rd line - 5) . Thankfully, it's far less challenging for my older boys to count syllables than to rhyme. I gave them the pattern for writing the poems, and we donned paper and pen for a brainstorming session. As we embarked on the planning process for writing, the irony began.
Haiku does not require complete sentences or punctuation. In the opposite case of story or paragraph writing, we've been practicing writing complete sentences using correct punctuation. Seems I've had to beat it into them, and even though it is becoming habit, they occasionally give me incomplete or run-on sentences. Ironically, the second they attempted to write a haiku, they gave me nothing but complete sentences and correct end punctuation! As I sat there urging them to use phrases instead of complete sentences, I couldn't help but cringe at the thought that I was contradicting all the skills I had beaten into them recently. In my efforts to salvage some of the progress we'd made in successful sentence writing, we reflected on how the rules of grammar have exceptions, and they understood a little better why they were allowed to write without sentences.
Haiku typically have nature themes, but I gave them permission to choose any topic. Now don't go all legalistic on me when you see what we turned up for Haiku. The Americanized version of original Haiku has evolved far from the Japanese original.
Here's the result:


Star Wars by Caleb Cook
Galaxy in space
Lots of action and fighting
Force may be with YOU


Volcanoes by Lucas Cook
Gigantic hot rocks
Hot lava flows down the side
Smoke and ashes rise


Lego’s by the Cooks
Many small pieces
Use your imagination
Ready, set, create

Calvin
sneaky little child
a big imagination
grounded once again

Share your very own Haiku in our comments section, just don't post it on Facebook or it could become public domain! :)