A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Thanks Tracy for sharing with us!

First, I wish to thank you for such a great idea as Tuesday Teatime.

I hesitate to send you these pictures, since they are not the usual pretty table and fancy manners. My family normally enjoys Tuesday Teatime. Sometimes we even create an elegant table. They especially like stories in verse, like “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Pied Piper of Hamlin.” They were not in the mood yesterday, but I thought it would help us refocus and enjoy some words. We were dining and reading around the coffee table. It wasn’t going well; they were complaining that they didn’t like the food, and how long before they could watch TV. I started reading them silly poems by Ogden Nash, and others. They recognized the poem “The Kitten” from a choral concert they had attended on Mother’s Day. My seven-year-old son, Nishan, was enjoying the silly poems so much he took the book from me so he could read them. My thirteen year old daughter, Sarah (not in the picture), took the book from him so she could read them. Then, Rose picked a tongue twister book and the hilarity began.

In the first picture Rose and Nishan are reading each other poems. In the second picture they have fallen over laughing.

I’d say the goal of enjoying words was met. Thanks, again.

Tracy Jayasinghe

—
“If we argue against any branch of liberty, just because sometimes people abuse that liberty, then we argue against liberty itself.” Jean Lee Latham, in Carry On, Mr Bowditch

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.