Brave Writer

Dear Julie-

Here is a photo of our most recent Tea Time. My daughter Stefanie and I dressed up to celebrate the ending of our history unit study on the mid 1800s.

Blessings, Cindy Burban

Teatime to Go!

Teatime at home is fun, but Teatime to go is totally terrific!

My daughter and I have been enjoying our Tuesday Teatimes each week since last June when we became a Bravewriter family. It was one of the very first ideas from The Writer’s Jungle that I instituted; being the clever mom of a girl who loves an ‘event’ I knew it would be the one idea that my daughter would totally hop on board for, and did she ever! But now that Fall is here our schedule has gotten increasingly more hectic and, try as we might to remain diligent in our teatime goals, we found it being pushed aside for other activities.

One of those other activities is ice skating. Twice a week we find ourselves at the local ice rink with another homeschooling family where our daughters take skating lessons.  As homeschoolers we usually have the rink’s cafeteria all to ourselves during the day so we tend to pack food and snacks to nourish our active skaters who are famished when they finish practicing. One day, eager to squeeze in our beloved teatime I had a brainstorm, I invited the other family to join us in a Teatime to Go…at the rink’s cafeteria. (It just so happens on this particular day of the week that we all have about an hour and a half to kill before heading off to the local art museum for art class.)

There we sat, munching freshly baked cookies, sipping tea and cocoa and sharing poetry with one another. It wasn’t formal china, there were no flowers or fancy linens, but there was plenty of poetry and companionship.

Dear Julie,

We do Thursday teatimes as Tuesday is a busy day for us but I figure you’ll let me get away with that!

I came across your blog a few months ago and loved all your ideas to inspire kids to write and enjoy literature – we especially love the teatime idea and it is a firm favourite in our household! My elder daughter and I are currently on the kidswrite basic course which started this week.

The first picture captures our very first tea and as you can see the hot chocolate, Indian spiced tea and freshly baked cupcakes worked their magic and we had a blast! We read a few poems (my girls like the funny ones from Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein at the moment) and we continued with our read aloud story which is currently Eva Ibbotson’s “Secret Of Platform 13” which the girls are loving. My little boy (just turned 2) likes the hot chocolate and cake and even sits patiently through our readings for most part! I’m thinking of including some fun nursery rhymes for our next tea so as to include him in the whole experience.

The girls really look forward to it. We all have our roles – I prepare the food (although sometimes they help me with the baking beforehand) and drinks, My middle daughter lays the tablecloth and gets the centrepiece to decorate the table and my eldest sets the plates, cutlery and napkins (we use real cloth ones!). The youngest usually sits in his high chairs and bangs on the plates calling for cake and hot chocolate – it is very sweet. He has now learnt to wait for everything to be laid and for us to sit down before he touches the food. Then we say grace and as we all dig into the treats – we take turns to read poems we’ve chosen. Finally, I read the chosen story for the rest of the time while the kids polish off the food.

Our subsequent teatimes have been joined by my mother and even the neighbours kids. We are having so much fun and it is a wonderful family tradition to establish. THANKS!

Chi-ann Rajah

Hi Julie,
We are new to the BraveWriter life and poetry teatime was a great jumping in spot for us. These photos are from our first Tea last spring. We even used your recipe to make ourselves some blueberry scones, which we had never tried to do before. I’m not one for messing with a recipe, but in the spirit of a great event unfolding, we went with what was on hand. After a couple rounds of poems, we settled in for the first chapter of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. I had been waiting to introduce them to the series, so it was wonderful to have such a special setting in which to start.

They enjoy tea time so much that they often seek out poetry books at the library and will even set the table, with all the trimmings, while I finish up other chores.

Thank you for sharing your philosophy,
Jennica Rindshoj

Julie,

May 5 is Boys’ Day in Japan. Since I discovered Boys’ Day, we celebrate it every year, though not in the traditional fashion of the Japanese. However, we did celebrate all day! We began the day with boy-made chocolate-chip pancakes. Following breakfast, we went to our local gymnastics room, and played Nerf-dart tag for an hour.

Our tea-party day included gunpowder tea, which initially is in the form of little pellets. They “explode” in the water, creating a mild tea. This is one tea we don’t make in a teapot, because it is too much fun to watch the action! Though it is not dramatic, it is science!

Each of the boys chose a piece of art to discuss, and at least one poem to read. Among other boy-themed poems, I read The Barefoot Boy, by John Greenleaf Whittier.

Dinner included sweet-and-sour turkey on rice. At least it was a hint of Asian cuisine!

~Teresa

Hi Julie-

Here’s some pictures of our Tuesday teatimes. As I wrote to you recently, we read poetry constantly—anywhere, anytime. Jack Prelutsky is definitely one of our favs! We first encountered his poems through a book cd from the library. Such a joy to hear him read his own work. Very funny!

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Dear Julie,

We just got back from a two week vacation to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati (The Creation Museum).  My children remembered that Cincinnati is your city, but we didn’t have time to look you up!

Our last tea was a lovely, very proper (albeit in the kitchen vs. the dining room) St. Patrick’s Day Tea on March 17.  We served British scones, green kiwi slices, orange (We’re Protestants! ) clementine segments, Earl
Grey Tea in my “Irish Cottage” teapot, and leprechauns’ gold pieces (Werther’s caramels in the gold foil).  We even had Irish place cards at the table.  No poetry this day.  We just listened to Irish music on You Tube, with scenes of Ireland on the computer screen.  The sun shone and it was light (…Ahhh….these longer days of March!) and lovely.  So were the scones!  Light, flaky and wonderful.  I thought some might like my recipe, so I’ll share it here.

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