Favorite Thing #19 – Poetry Tea Time

This is one of our favorite homeschool activities in our house. We do it every week or maybe every other when things are busy. I can’t take credit for this idea, a friend of mine told me about it and I believe it originally came from Brave Writer. You can check it out by clicking on this link. I never really looked at this website or used it to help craft our time, I just listened to my friend and thought it was a great idea so we’ve made it our own.

For poetry tea time we bake something fresh and delicious– in the picture it was pumpkin cookies, today is banana bread. I’ll often add some other things as well–fresh fruit or mini sandwiches if it’s lunchtime. Then we have some sort of special drink. Sometimes this is actual tea, hot or iced, sometimes it is hot chocolate or apple cider. It depends on the season and what we have on hand. I try to make the table look nice for this, carving out a special time and space for it. Once everything is set up we all sit down together and enjoy our treats. This time has become like a short sabbath rest in the midst of our week. I typically start by reading a few poems to the kids out of a book we have or one I’ve picked up at the library. Then the kids will recite the poem that they are currently working on for school and one or two previous poems. I love that this gets them excited to practice recitation and it gets them excited to listen to poetry. It is also an opportunity to hear and remember poems that we have learned before which helps significantly with retention. I did not love poetry growing up and I wanted to change that for my kids. Poetry is a regular component of the classical education that they are receiving and in my older age now I can see its beauty. I love how they are seeing the beauty so much younger and are excited for poetry. While I’m sure you can do this without a poetry tea time, it certainly makes it a lot of fun!