Celebrate Haiku Month in the Classroom

The other day I learned that February is Haiku Month. Maybe because it’s the shortest month and they are really short poems? I don’t know. In any case it’s a great time to learn about, read and write haiku in the classroom or at home.

Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry form that usually has nature as its subject, but for kids haiku can be about anything. The main distinction for haiku is the breakdown of syllables per line: 5, then 7, then 5 again.

There are lots of great books about haiku for kids, but one of our favorites is Hi, Koo!, about a panda experiencing the four seasons. Check out this list from Imagination Soup for more good haiku books for kids.

If you want to keep nature the focus of your poems and the weather is cooperating, take your class on a nature walk to discover something to write about. Upper Elementary Snapshots has a printable you can use so kids can take notes on what they see, hear and feel on the walk and then write their poem based on those observations.

Notes from the Portable has another printable students can use for writing their haiku.

Imagine Forest has some great tips for how to write haiku based on traditional forms, including how to structure a haiku as you write it and how to present it on the page.

That Homeschool Family has a good post on haiku including the benefits of writing haiku, and they have a free download for writing spring-themed haiku, complete with lists of spring themed words with one, two, three and four syllables to make writing even easier.

If going outside for inspiration is not an option for you, have kids write and illustrate a haiku about their favorite animal or plant. This activity from Teach Beside Me is really cute and would be super cute to hang in the classroom or hallway.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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