I’ve been obsessing over the Brave Writer website this week… I’m anxious for my children to be old enough to dive in. (My oldest is in kindergarten.) Thankfully, tea and poetry knows no age limits. My 2 year old daughter was in heaven getting to use Mommy’s fancy china. I can’t wait to start scouring my favorite thrift stores for fun cups and saucers and teapots. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a wonderful family tradition. Thank you for the encouragement!!
Jennifer
Image (cc)
Throwback Tuesday (to the winter).
We were reading My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States by Lee Bennett Hopkins.
My girls (9, 6, and 3) love Tea Time, and we usually have banana bread. I post this as an example that even when lovely baked goods can’t get done for Tea Time, there is always hot chocolate and peanut butter spoons.
Shelah
Image (cc)
Poetry Teatimes have been the highlight of our fledgling home-schooling experience. We decided at the onset to go “the whole hog,” dusting off the family china and releasing it from captivity in the china cabinet. We even serve the lemonade from the teapot and steep my tea “properly” using loose leaf tea leaves. It has become a ritual of family and history as well as of poetry – and an opportunity to celebrate links to our culture and family many thousands of miles across the sea.
Each week as we sit in our finery (thank-you, dress-up box!), I am reminded happily of learning poetry as a child and sitting Trinity College of London Speech and Drama exams in rural New Zealand. I can still recall many of the poems and the memories of discussing poetry with my wonderful teacher, Edith Grut. Feeling a good poem roll off your tongue is something every child (and adult) should experience.
Our local library is such an amazing source of poetry books so we are never short of reading material. Our most popular choices are nonsense poems and nature poetry. The squirrels and cardinals outside the window seem to enjoy them too.
Poetry Teatime has become so much more than the sum of its parts and we look forward to it every week, debating at length the merits of various baked treats, picking flowers for the table and selecting teacups to coordinate with our outfits. Thanks, Brave Writer, for introducing the magic to our family.
Sarah
Image (cc)
Here is a fun picture of what teatime often looks like for us :-). Today we found this fun poem:
From the book My Hippo Has the Hiccups
I’m Steve the Superhero
and you simply won’t believe
the superpowers I possess
by merely being Steve.
My smile can crack a mirror
and my breath can make you faint.
And when I take my socks off
it’s been known to peel the paint.
The power in my underarms
can make a grown man cry.
A single burp can make you want
to crawl away and die.
The bad guys know it’s hopeless,
so they all get up and leave
whenever they get wind of me–
the superhero Steve.
–Kenn Nesbitt (Copyright © 2005 Kenn Nesbitt. All Rights Reserved.)
I have discovered it is easier to give each of my kids a tray covered with a cute towel to catch drippings and a small serving set of their own (including sugar cubes and cream for each). They can serve tea for themselves and enjoy looking at books while I read or we all recite poems with an audio version of poems chosen from Andrew Pudewa’s Poetry Memorization curriculum.
Thanks,
Brandy
Image (cc)
We have only just begun Tea Times and we are absolutely delighted. They are somewhat sporadic due to our schedule these days, but they are a joy to my son and I. He excitedly creates the most intricate of centerpieces and helps bake our goodies… and then he giggles and laughs throughout our readings.
Thank you for the most delicious and creative part of our homeschool adventure.
Antoinette
Images (cc)
