I have to say that when I first read the idea I was pretty skeptical. My kids are 2 and 4, not reading or writing yet. But I was happy to have a break from painting and after thinking about it, came up with a plan that I thought would work for us.
Day #1 Syllables
We started at the beginning with learning what a syllable is and practicing counting the syllables in a bunch of words. This was something we just did for fun while driving around in the car.
Day #2 Poetry
We read lots of poems and talked about how some poems rhyme and some don't and that some poems are long and some are short. I have a Shel Silverstein book we looked at and my 4-year old loved the silly poems. My 2-year old also enjoyed listening to the poems
Day #3 Haiku Samples
I read the samples that MomUnplugged linked to in her original mail to the kids and had my 4-year old count the syllables. Then we talked about how they were all 5-7-5 and how there are different kinds of poems that follow different rules. After that, I cut the haiku out and let the kids glue them onto sheets of paper and then "illustrate" them. This was another activity they both liked. I was going to include one of my 2-year olds works of art but I can't get it to work right now.
Day #4 Writing Haiku
Only my older child did this one. He dictated some haiku to me and I wrote it down. Of course I had to assist as his lines tended to be really long so I had to help a good bit to get it to follow the patterns. The ideas were his though.
So here are his original compositions:
Up above the world
Find the brown bear in the trees
So that they went on
A boy is eating
In a house with a big boy
Eating on a chair
Find the brown bear in the trees
So that they went on
A boy is eating
In a house with a big boy
Eating on a chair
I am so glad we did this project in spite of my initial hesitation. We really did have a fun time and it was nice to have a project we could do in little pieces as it worked into our schedule.
