haiku for all seasons

Second Grade Work

Haiku is one of my personal favorite poetry genres, rich with images, spare of words. Teaching children to write Haiku is not difficult, and it gives them a little practice with syllabication. It's a great supplement with units on seasons, animals, habitats, or other science topics!

For this lesson, the Haiku writing is only the first part; to me, they are incomplete until illustrated. I have done this lesson with second graders, at-risk students, English language learners of all elementary grades, and with fourth and fifth graders. The basic format of the lesson is identical for each of these groups; differentiations are made for specific needs. For example, a little more work on syllabication with second graders and English-language learners, and a push for more rich and detailed vocabulary with older students.

Second Grade Work

It's important to help students understand that Haiku does not tell a story, but simply presents an image for the reader to visualize. And I always tell students that it's more important to get a clear, beautiful image than to have the exact syllabication, so a little fudging is allowed. 

I always do a shared writing activity first, writing a Haiku with students. I model making a word bank, trying out different words, testing the syllables, and trying substitute words if the syllabication is not correct. But that 5-7-5 pattern can be tricky, especially for little ones, so I do make sure they know it's ok to leave a syllable out or add an extra, if they can't make their image work with the words they want to use.

Fourth Grade Work

Children can write a Haiku pretty quickly if they have an abundant word bank, so I do like to have them try two or three and then choose their favorite for publishing with illustration. Most often, I have students do a torn paper collage for the illustration, but cut paper collage, drawings, and even just a colorful tissue paper collage are just as beautiful.

Illustrated Haiku is a wonderful way to integrate Art with Language Arts, and it also can easily connect to Science as well. Any nature-oriented subject matter is appropriate, and the results make a beautiful, colorful, and maybe even informative bulletin board display.

This lesson, Illustrated Haiku for All Seasons, is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for those who would like step-by-step directions.
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harvest moon and spooky trees

Sometimes I get inspiration for art lessons from random pictures, and that's how this one happened. One day my Facebook feed presented a photo of a tree silhouetted against a huge moon and this art lesson immediately formed itself in my mind:  tissue paper collage moon + spooky tree. I could see the end result in my brain, and backtracked through that image to develop the lesson for a second grade classroom.

At first, I thought it would be a fine idea to have the students create the circle using a compass, but no compasses were to be found so I opted for a hand-drawn circle, which turned out to be a huge benefit!  The circle was filled with tissue paper collage, and while that dried, we made the trees -- basically a line drawing outlined with another continuous line, cut on the outside line, and flipped over.

My suggestions to the kids:
Don't put the moon in the exact center of the page.
Don't put the tree in the exact center of the moon.

Some of the kids had a little trouble cutting out the tree shape, especially if they had crossed branches, so I helped by showing them how to cut into a closed shape. For a "first time" try, I think these turned out great! I wrote up the lesson and had a few other teachers try it out, and it was a hit with everyone!

It's a great art lesson for teaching how to use space, talking about the use of warm and cool colors, and working with interesting lines. It was fun, easy, a little messy, and generally pretty successful. And it's perfect for October! Just spooky enough to be "Halloween-y" without all the Halloween hype. This lesson, with step-by-step directions, is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store. Look for Harvest Moon Tree Silhouette!

fall leaf tissue paper collage

This Kindergarten lesson can be adapted to any time of year, any season, any subject matter. Last year, I had my students do a tissue paper collage in the shape of a heart during February. The real purpose of the lesson, rather than the finished product, is to help students learn to use a paintbrush. I teach them to hold it vertically like a pencil, use just a little glue-water, and to brush in one direction.

I start the lesson with a little song that I learned from a colleague when I was teaching Kindergarten:

Fall is here! Fall is here!
How do you think I know?
The leaves are turning
..... orange and brown....
.... yellow and red....
And so it must be so!

I have the words written out on a chart with the color words written in those colors and everything else written in dark green. It is posted on the wall surrounded by several pictures of fall leaves and trees. We talk about how we know it is fall, and look carefully at the colors of the leaves.

I use a variety of pre-printed leaf shapes so that no two leaves will be alike at any one work table. I create these on the copy machine on white construction paper. In the future, I might try these on light green, light blue, and yellow.

I use regular white glue, watered down to about a 50/50 proportion. The tissue paper I have is the "bleeding" kind so it can get pretty messy, but most students do understand not to paint glue all over the shape, just in the space they want to lay the small piece of tissue. I demonstrate for the students how to hold the brush, how much glue to use, how to tear the tissue paper, and how to paint over the color to make it stick to the paper, then I send them off to the tables to choose a leaf they like and to get started. As they work, I work with individual students who need help holding the brush, calculating how much glue to use, and/or how to tear the paper into smaller pieces.

When everyone is finished, we take some time to share all the work so that all students can see what everyone else did. I don't have space to hang them all so I choose a few that are different colors and shapes to hang on the wall along with the song chart.