Maiden Poetry Tea Time

In the name of deschooling, we had our first of hopefully many poetry tea times recently. This is a really fun concept that I learned about while reading Julie Bogart’s book, The Brave Learner. I’m drawn to the idea because, who doesn’t love a tea party!? And if I can incorporate some poetry or other form of reading/learning to the experience, all the better!

The kids were super excited for tea time when I let them know it was on the agenda yesterday. Just like the tea time of my own childhood, I substituted tea for things like juice, chocolate milk, etc. Whatever your kids enjoy drinking really. And we had a mixture of sweet and savory finger snacks to accompany the “tea”.

I laid out some poetry books that I purchased with their curricula this year, as well as some poetry books from John’s collection. I just opened one of the kids’ poetry books and read to myself until I found a short, funny poem that I shared with them. This spurred a conversation about a form of short poetry: the Haiku.

Overall I think the kids really enjoyed the tea time experience, though they were

reluctant to open books on their own this time, because as they put it, I was trying to force some kind of learning on them. I’m not sure how to help them shake such negative associations with learning. They are avid readers when it’s something they discover on their own and enjoy. Usually it’s fictional, although C10 enjoys learning about history, albeit through fictional accounts of historical events (see the “I Survived” books).

If you’re a homeschooler with kids that have any sort of negative associations like the ones mine are dealing with, and you’ve found a way to help them create new, healthy associations with books and learning in general, I’d love to hear what has worked for you. Please share in the comments!