Leaf-eating Haiku

Today I was in Vivace's classroom for our monthly Four Winds lesson (the first of this year).  This is a hands-on nature science program for elementary aged students which we parents teach.  We have monthly trainings which are fabulous; I learn so much!  Today our topic was "Leaf-eaters" and the kids enjoyed it.  That said, the activities went very quickly, and we had plenty of time for our final activity, which was to teach them to write Haiku and somehow relate it (generally) to what we learned.  I was surprised how much they enjoyed this.  In 2nd grade, they actually do understand the idea of syllables, and they were able to write about nature (we had a lot of poems about owls and butterflies - I do think these related to our topic for the most part).  One child wrote about cactus (I thought that very creative), another about dragonflies, and their illustrations were great too.  I learned about this teacher; I think she loves Four Winds.  She had on hand activities related to food chains, ecosystems, and habitats, and all those beautiful Haiku will be up on the classroom walls tomorrow.  And the kids were very excited about reading them aloud to boot.  It was a great intro to the year, and I think we'll keep doing poetry with these kids all year based on how today went!