On Monday, May 21st, Whittier second graders, in conjunction with Art Start artist Guillermo Delgado, hosted a Haiku Chalk Festival. Second graders chalked one of the three haiku poems they’d written on the sidewalk in front of Whittier School.
Second graders also stitched books compiling all the haiku written (haiku never has an “s” on the end, even in the plural form). First,students created bird’s eye view watercolors of their walk to school. Next, they took a silent walk around Whittier and around a nearby block, jotting inspiration for their haiku. Each student wrote 3 haiku — one inspired by school, one by neighborhood, and one by city. Then they illustrated each haiku, and their work was copied and bound in books for each to take home. Guillermo Delgado was inspired by Yosa Buson’s haiku from Japan in the 1700s. Mr. Delgado read his works aloud while students created.
Here is the slideshow by Peter Wagner and Guillermo Delgado.