A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Hi Julie,

About four weeks ago, I read your description for Tea Time to my three kids. My girls, in particular, were very interested because they regularly set up their own tea times. My 13-yr-old boy snubbed me and returned to his card game.

Well, last night, the girls shooed me out of the kitchen and said I was not allowed back in until further notice. About two hours later, I received an invitation: I was to arrive at our tent in the back yard at 9pm SHARP for the “BEST tea party EVER.” So at 9pm sharp, I rang the little dinner bell outside the tent. In the tent was a plate of homemade cookies they had just made (and they even cleaned up after themselves!), specialty tea, a fan to keep things cool, our Favorite Poems Old and New book, Apples to Apples, Girl Talk (by American Girl), Battleship, and several suspicious sleeping bags and pillows. Well, one thing led to another, and we were having a full-blown tea party/sleepover extravaganza! We drank tea, ate cookies, read poetry (handing the book around in a circle to read our favorites), played Apples to Apples–OH–and jumped up and down on top of bubble wrap! We then snuggled down and “slept” to the sound of crickets, intermittent sprinklers, and not-so-distant barking dogs across the way. I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but we had a ball, as well as a very special mother/daughters night.

Thought you’d like to hear about our fun tea time…Thanks for the idea. I suppose our future tea times will end up on Tuesday afternoons, but this was a great way to start them off!

Stacy

This is my daughter’s birthday tea! She invited all her friends and their mommys. Isn’t homeschool wonderful when a 3 year old has a party and girls from 1 to 12 come? (and they’re not even cousins).

Over the summer break (December-January here in New Zealand) I was looking for new ideas to fine tune our home schooling in the coming academic year. I came across Brave Writer and decided to implement a few of the ideas. Tuesday Teatime has become a family favourite, even though our version doesn’t happen on Tuesday and it doesn’t involve tea!

Every Friday morning we all gather to share poetry, hot chocolate and some home baking. It is a nice relaxing way to end our academic week and I’m pleased to have found something that everyone can enjoy together. With four children, ranging in age from five to thirteen, and all with very different learning styles and abilities, having the whole family learn together doesn’t happen very often. I will admit that the teenage male was a little reluctant initially, but the lure of food soon proved too much! Now we all look forward to sharing and discussing poems . Whenever new poetry books ocme home, the children are eager to read through them to find the perfect poem to share on Friday morning.

One of my favourite teatimes happened in early February. Febrary 6 was Waitangi Day, a commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by the British government and some Maori chiefs, whereby New Zealand became a British colony. In honour of this I opted for a New Zealand theme for that week’s tea time. I selected some New Zeland poetry books from the library, made Anzac biscuits (made from coconut, rolled oats, butter and boiling water they were sent to the troops – after whom they are named – in World War I, and thus had to survive at least two months at sea before reaching the recipient) and bought chocolate fish (a fish shaped, chocolate covered, marshmallow confectionary, often used to say thank-you or to reward good behaviour). We enjoyed some great new (to us at least) poetry which was often humourous or presented a new way of looking at things. This poem by Peter Hawes drew spontaneous giggles.

The Sheep
The sheep’s a thing that’s made of hide
With lots of mutton chops inside.
They run around in things called flocks
With fleeces made of unknit socks.

Another that we really enjoyed was Down the Back of the Chair by Margaret Mahy, which has been requested and recited so many times since that all the children have virtually memorised it word for word, with no real effort.

Thanks for the wonderful idea. Friday teatime is a wonderful addition to our homeschooling experience.

Sandra in New Zealand

(Margaret Mahy’s book can be found online here)

Here are some pictures of a pretty typical tea time at our house.

We all look forward to this special time on Tuesdays!! We usually do it around 2:00 when baby sister (14mo old) goes down for a nap, but if we miss for some reason we can’t go to bed without having our time together!

Through out the week the older three girls and myself select poems that we would like to share with everyone. My precious 7yo daughter has had some struggles and is not quite at a reading level where she can independantly enjoy just any poetry book. It was a huge boost to discover our library has some poetry books on CD!! She listens throughout the week all on a headset and then brings a CD player to tea time. She loves that she is able to contribute along with her older sisters! It’s hard to explain what this has meant to her. All three girls seem to have fantastic taste in poetry… in my not so humble opinion!!

Thank you so much for all you have contributed to our family!

Shannon