Category Archives: Poetry and Poet Study

Poetry Tea Time

Traditionally, I have had a Poetry Study time weekly where we read a bit of biography and a few poems by our chosen poet for the term. It is nice, but not always particularly memorable. I also tried to read a poem or two just for fun during the daily family studies. I felt that those poems were lacking – they were okay, but not necessarily full of living ideas that made me want to think about what we were reading.

Poetry Tea Time Refreshments 1

I have been listening to a few CM podcasts that featured Cindy Rollins of Morning Time fame (she is also the hostess of The Mason Jar on Circe’s podcasts) where she described her family enjoying a poem in depth. They only read one poem at a time, repeating it daily until they were able to commit it to memory, but also giving the whole family time to linger over the rolling phrases and mental imagery the words created in their minds and hearts. This stoked my desires to have lovely poems that spoke of truth, goodness, and beauty in all its myriad forms.

Questions like ‘How? When? What? and even Who” were lurking in the quiet recesses of my mind as I tried to figure out where to start. And then, as always, the Lord provided a tender mercy as He provided the answers in the form of a wonderful discussion my Charlotte Mason reading group had in December about reading Poetry and having it be fun and an effective way of conveying living ideas to our children. My friend shared with us her experience with Poetry Tea Time in their home. It sounded like so much fun that I resolved to try it in our own home.

Our first week back to school for our second term, I wanted (needed) something different to do so that we would all look forward to it and decided to introduce Poetry Tea Time. I made a pitcher of lemonade and some chocolate chip cookies, handed each of my girls a poetry book and told them to find a poem to share, asked the older girls to be prepared to recite a memorized poem, and invited my mom to participate – that officially makes it a Noteworthy Event, especially when I use the special dishes my mother got as a wedding present.

At 2 pm, we sat down, had some refreshments on our fancy little glass dishes and cups, and we each shared a poem (or two). I introduced the poet we’re studying this term by sharing a few paragraphs of his biography and reading a couple of his poems. That was it. 25 minutes and a snack. It was fun. And school could be done for the day with this ritual of poetry sharing.

So I tried it the next week. Same time, place, and people – and it was a smashing success. We sat around the table for a whole hour reading poetry (Jack Prelutsky is so fun!) and laughing. They are already asking about getting ready this week. I felt the Spirit whispering that this is what my family needs… to slow down, to reconnect to each other as loved friends, to just be in the moment – not stressing so much about the next thing that has to be checked-off. What a blessing!

Next week I will share some of my favorite poetry resources, new and old!

For more ideas on Poetry Tea Time, click on these links:

7 Ways to an Easy and Fun Poetry Tea Time by Creekside Learning

Easy Tips for Poetry Tea Time by Pam Barnhill at EdSnapshots

To Shakespeare or Not to Shakespeare? That is the question…

3 Replies

I have the book called How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare and finished it about a year ago. I was totally excited about Shakespeare when I was done because he is so enthusiastic and I loved how he explained the characters and the plays he chose. I wanted to go find a well-done production and watch them all. =)

The week I finished the book, we started memorizing a passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream since we have already studied it and my children enjoyed it. We memorized a couple of his choices from that play and then skipped to other plays.

The author has children memorizing a variety of plays and passages. Depending on your children ages and maturity, I will caution that we need to be careful about which plays that we share and about what we choose to commit to our children’s memory.

Edited to add:

We have been memorizing Shakespeare for a year now. I made a memory box (see here) and have created review cards for each passage. The girls are loving this. We are currently finishing The Winter’s Tale (per JitterBug’s request) and have so much fun with it.

Side benefits we have enjoyed:

the little family jokes as we quote certain passages at each other when something reminds us of it.
Reading the scriptures and other harder books is not so intimidating…in fact, Shakespeare has taken much of the “it’s to hard for me” away.
And how much fun is it to listen to the kids as we are reading the lines aloud to hear them start putting expression into it – even plays that they have not read before? The ability to use your voice and tones to create an enjoyable reading experience for an audience is important….whether it is for a large audience or for a single child who learns to love books because of your excitement over the words and story.
The passages we choose make great quotes for a Book of Mottoes (aka a Commonplace Book)
We have some great discussions about events that occur in the plays. It’s a good way to discuss how to handle various situations in life.

Another thing that I am enjoying after reading about some of Shakespeare’s plays (as well as actually reading the plays) is how much richer other books are – including CM’s Original Series – because I understand the story lines of the characters the author is referring to. There are so many subtle nuances that you lose when you don’t know the story. I feel the same way about mythological references in books. You miss something the author is speaking of when you don’t know the story they are referencing. Anyway…off my soapbox… 🙂

We will continue to memorize Shakespeare and we will choose our own passages from the plays we actually have read. I think in the end it will mean more to them because they will have already made their own connections with it.