Our Poetry Teatimes are rarely elaborate, but I find if I keep it simple it is more likely to happen. Here are five of my six children, my only little boy is in his highchair to the side. It’s was a wonderful, rainy day and I made tea time special by lighting candles.
Thank you for always being so encouraging.
Bethany
We started our first school day of 2015 with a breakfast tea. Honestly, it all came together wonderfully at the last minute. I had other plans originally but I am so thankful that poetry is the way we began our school year. On Sundays my husband makes coffee cake for breakfast. So, I put coffee cake on a pretty platter, eggs on a platter, I whipped up some homemade whipped cream, and cut strawberries. These were all items I had around the house! I already had the fresh flowers on the table. They are from my garden. I pulled out a tablecloth and fancy china. We were all out of tea so I used orange juice instead.
I feel like modifying is one of my strengths with 6 kids between the ages of 3 and 12. I pulled out a lot of poetry books that and set them at the end of the table. Each child took turns picking a poem and reading it aloud. My 5 year old isn’t reading but she still picked out a poem and one of her siblings read it for her. Even my 3 year old got up with a book and pretended to read from it. She probably received the most applause. It was such a perfect way to begin our new school year and I am confident my kids will remember it. This week we are going to do a baseball themed poetry dinner and daddy will be included.
Have a most blessed day,
Heather
Thanks so much for inspiring us to tea time! Here are the kids at our first. They chose a theme and read poems about cats while one of ours joined in.
We were eating Peppridge Farm cookies, which I had carefully hidden in the pantry. I knew homemade was not going to happen and these were a great treat. In the pot – hot chocolate.
John, 9, read The Owl and the Pussycat. Hannah, 11, read The Cats Have Come to Tea by Kate Greenway. I have had a lot of fun keeping my eyes open for poetry books with illustrations at used bookstores and library sales, and they opened one called Curious Cats in Art and Poetry.
I read a poem about fairies and then went on with our read aloud. I didn’t really think the kids were that enthralled at the time, but later comments about how much they loved the teatime really encouraged me to keep this up. It was a lovely break from more traditional activities. The animals loved it, too!
My husband has sweet childhood memories of reading poetry as a family at holidays, so I hope the kids will enthusiastically participate this Christmas.
Kristin
