Write Your Own Haiku!
The past couple of days, the kids have been writing their own Haikus during our writing workshop time. Your family might have fun with this too!
What is a haiku? It is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. These seem simple as they are only three lines, but the kids found it to be tricky!
A haiku has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 syllables in the last (for a total of 17 syllables).
Generally, a haiku has a seasonal word or phrase. And haikus use sensory images (see, hear, taste, feel, touch) to paint an image in the reader’s mind.
We gave it a go in our homeschool. The first one was by DD:
Roaring like a lion
Crashing its thunderous waves
Whisking leaves downstream.
Lone tadpole hovers
February sun warms the pond
Is it too early?
Stars dot the night sky
Disappear when bats fly by
Silent in their quest
How do your kids do?! (Feel free to send me theirs and I’d be happy to publish it here on the blog!)
Other Writing Resources Here on the Blog:
5 Tips for Helping Kids to Write – Writing Resource Pack (Currently Free!)
Do you want to learn more about starting your own Homeschool Writing Workshop? Here are some related posts:
- Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing program
- Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #2: Creating a Writing Workshop Area and Materials to Have on Hand
- Creating a Writing Workshop Post #3: This post is about Mini-Lessons during writing time, mentor texts and includes reviews of 8 or 9 writing books that you might find helpful.
- Writing Resource Pack: This is a post about the 30-page pack I made for our writing workshop. Reference pages on the 6 +1 Wri ting Traits, Mini-Lessons, the types of writing, creating a powerful beginning, techniques for ending a story/paper, and so forth. (These writing resources are free to download.)
- Writing Workshop: Dr. Seuss Style: The kids and I had fun writing in the style of Dr. Seuss!
- Biography Research Paper Resource Pack
- Practical Pointers for Working with a Reluctant Writer (or any Writer)
- Writing Activity to Spark Kids’ Imagination!
- 40 Journal Writing Prompts (Free Printable)
- Animal Portfolio Project: writing, art and geography activities that go with any animals… With many activities to choose from. Writing activities include both fiction and non-fiction suggestions such as
- Write a speech or a letter to the president on why your animal needs protection in the wild.
- Menu: Create a humorous menu at a restaurant where your animals would like to eat.
- WWII Portfolio Project
- Writing Workshop: What We’re Doing for Writing This Fall
- Writing Workshop Rules! Why the Writing Workshop continues to work so well in our homeschool.
Mini-Lessons to Use in a Writing Workshop:
- What makes a good book or story?
- Make your story come alive with details and description.
- Creating Interesting Characters
- Story Openings: Set the mood or feeling of your story
- Gathering story ideas from your own life
- Alliteration and more
- MiniLesson – Describing in Detail – Adding Details Exercise – Fun Activity!(Don’t miss this one, the kids LOVED this activity!!)
- Writing Workshop: Conflict in Literature (Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, etc)
- Writing Workshop Mini-Lesson: Rules for Writing and the Story Writing Process — Have your kids read the Plot Chicken? We started our Writing Workshop this year off with this book. What a great buk, buk!! In fact, I liked it so much that I created a chicken writing rules printable to go along with the book!
- Writing Scary Stories – Writing Workshop Mini-Lesson
- Writing Workshop: Depth and Complexity Icons
- Writing: Show Don’t Tell Practice Worksheets (Free Packet) – Actually I included these in the resource packet above too!
You might be interested in our FREE grammar practice worksheets at the language arts resource tab above
Check out some of the curriculum we use for Language Arts – Literature, Spelling, Grammar, Vocabulary here:
See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. You might also want to check out some of our resources pages above (such as our Science, Language Arts, or History Units Resource Pages) which have links to dozens of posts. Don’t forget to check out Our Store as well. 
~Liesl
