A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

The first time I suggested poetry teatime Tuesday to my kids, ages 5 and 7, I was pretty sure I’d get the usual ‘knee-jerk no’ response. But, the allure of treats was enough to pull them in at least for a short get together. Even though I felt like they suffered the poetry just to get a cookie, they were excited to repeat the experience the next week. Now they love the whole process. My 5 year old son likes to choose the tablecloth, put it on, and carefully fold the napkins. If he’s feeling extra fancy, he will put on Beethoven in the background. My 7 year old daughter always makes the centerpiece, and sometimes even the snacks. They enjoy the ritual so much, if we miss it, we’ll just have poetry teatime Tuesday on Wednesday.

Our reading material isn’t strictly poetry. While I do include at least some poetry each week, often the kids bring other books to the table as well. I’ll keep on reading anything they want until the interest level starts to wane. Occasionally, I will ask them to listen to a poem that I love but they are not so interested in. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes not.

My favorite teatime was during a big snowstorm. Everything was kind of gray and moody. We had candlelight and deep ruby pomegranate seeds, and I miraculously got them interested in reading Poe’s ‘The Raven.’ They were shocked that a poem could be so dark and disturbing and they were hooked. Afterword, we ended up on YouTube and found a few different readings by Vincent Price and James Earl Jones and a great segment from The Simpsons where the raven’s “Nevermore” is spoken in a hysterical polly-wanna-cracker voice. We still use that silly ‘Nevermore’ as a random inside joke.

Poetry teatime is such a special time for our family. I wish we could make each of our ‘schooling’ experiences as delightful.

Cathy

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Teatime today. We all toasted to warmer weather. My pantry is rather bare so we had just a couple of cookies each. And I didn’t really like the book of poems that I’d gotten at the library. But we still enjoyed the time together and my daughter asked me for a few French words for the English words in a poem she wanted to read. I do enjoy this ritual.

~Ann

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My family has been trying to include Poetry Teatime in our week. We are seeing wonderful benefits to it! I have a large family with eight children ranging in age from 12 years down to 6 months old. I wondered how I could make poetry work for such a span of interests and understanding. After diving into I’m happy to report the water’s warm and cozy.

We set the stage for poetry with a tablecloth, candles, and a treat of some sort. On this day it was pumpkin muffins. I brought to the table:

• Collected Poems by Emily Dickenson
• A B C Go, the first volume from Collier’s Junior Classics library, which I remember reading as a child.
• The Children’s Treasury of Classic Poetry
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, a book we were reading aloud as a family.

While the children ate I read poems, beginning with Dickenson while all the mouths were full and little ones would listen. Then we read a few poems from the other, illustrated books. Some were funny, others fit the snow and cold outside our door.

Poetry finished, we dived back into Narnia and chapter fourteen, The Beginning of the End of the World. My children marveled over the stars turned human, giggled at Reepicheep’s squeaky voiced courage, and debated if they would have gone on with Caspian to the end of the world or not.

Later that afternoon a few children stole away with the poetry books to read in their beds. Their younger siblings snuggled down next to them. That is the most telling moment of all. Is poetry teatime for all ages? Yes.

Thank you for Brave Writer’s encouragement!

Tristan

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I love this picture. It completely captures each of their personalities! And low and behold, the one who is usually checked out during any poetry reading looks chipper.

My kids respond very positively to any time we have food on the table and candles lit. So for our tea time I just grabbed what was on hand – mint tea with xyla, jello, fruit leathers, strawberries, oranges, and gluten-free crackers with raw peanut butter and raspberry jelly. Since we have had to switch to gluten-free products I have not found many easy-to-make and tasty baked goods but they were troopers and enjoyed the spread.

This particular poetry time we were reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s “My Shadow”. My kids really like when we act out what we have been reading. The poem also makes more sense when we act and put expression into the reading. That also helps me understand since I have not had much exposure to poetry. My middle daughter, our performer, would also like to learn our “parts” to the poem so we can act it out for our family and friends.

I have to admit that the beginning of our year was a little stale and boring. I fell into a pattern of a schedule instead of routine. I KNOW that my kids like interactive activities and our read-aloud times. But because the curriculum guidebook told us to read certain books and to do certain activities on certain days I tried to stick with that but felt bad about my or the kids’ performance based on that standard. How silly. After looking over your website, listening to your podcasts, reading your blog, ordering and reading through Writer’s Jungle, Jot it Down, Partnership Writing, The Arrow (can you tell I’m into immersion?) and implementing those liberating changes to our days we are all so much happier!!!! What do you know!!!! School can be fun! Hahaha! I just laugh at myself. And fortunately my kids are laughing again too!

Kim

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