Our first week of the 2013-2014 school year, brought our first foray into the world of Brave Writer Poetry teas– Teatime Tuesday. Well, we are not really tea drinkers (ducks and hides) and while I love the idea…I thought in order to hook my kids, I probably should offer them something that they would LOVE and get excited about– smoothies it is!
Following the BW instructions I put a table cloth on the table (well, the closest thing to a table cloth I had!), a candle in the middle, broke out some of the poetry books we had on our shelf, made some smoothies, and called in the troops.
The kids perused the poetry books (that they had never laid hands on before), and each chose one to read aloud. C chose for me to read his for him and I was ok with that. We read poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rosetti, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The one I chose was by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and we read some of the fun facts about her life in The Child’s Introduction to Poetry.
After reading our poems, we added our own twist to end our poetry “smoothie” time. BW suggests ending with a read aloud. However, going along with one of BW’s Jot it Down writing projects we are doing, we plan to read a fairy tale to end our poetry time. Jot it Down has a fairy tale writing project where the kids write their own summaries of fairy tales and make their own books. So much fun! The kids loved reading the story The Snow Queen. It was a new one for all of us!
Our first Poetry Smoothie Tuesday was a success, the kids were begging for more! I love it! It may not be tea, and it may never again be on a Tuesday, but it it was great fun anyway!
~Nicole
From her blog, One Magnificent Obsession.
