Poetry High Tea is a sweet time when the kids and I set up a little tea party and share poetry with one another. This concept was one of the many that I gleaned from the beautiful and inspiring book ‘The Call of The Wild and Free’ by Ainsley Arment. We began weekly poetry high tea on Friday mid morning when I was homeschooling my young children. This quickly became a highlight of the week. I am not homeschooling anymore but every school holidays one of the kids will invariably ask if we can have poetry high tea. Here is what it looks like at our house.
Background music is a special part of poetry high tea. We use ‘Fiddle Instrumental’ on Spotify and it makes us feel like we’re having a cup of tea with Laura Ingalls from Little House On The Prairie while Pa plays the fiddle in the background. ‘Sleepy Fiddle’ and ‘Fiddle Instrumental and Folk’ are two more playlists that make an excellent pairing with Poetry High Tea. ‘Calming Instrumental Covers’ and ‘Peaceful Piano’ are two more Spotify created playlists that would suit. Any instrumental music will do, but lyrics in a song make it too difficult to focus on the poetry and the conversation. It’s fun to use the same playlist shuffled each time Poetry High Tea occurs and then the children become accustomed to the connection. I stifle a giggle when one of my children hears fiddle instrumental music and says ‘Mum, that sounds like Poetry High Tea’!
We use the same glass pedestal platter that I found at the op-shop each High Tea and I pile on seasonal fruit and vegetable sticks, whatever we have baked lately, nuts and perhaps some dip. The children like to arrange the food into patterns when they help with preparations. It’s funny how I can serve the same food I would have put onto their little plastic plates anyway but it feels more special on a pedestal dish. Your children may be more cultured than mine and be happy with herbal tea in the teapot, we have tried a variety of flavours but have settled on Milo for our warm drink. I like to have the drink warm rather than hot as the children enjoy pouring from the teapot themselves.
We use a tablecloth for Poetry High Tea. This separates it from our normal meals and snacks as we don’t usually use a tablecloth. If we are having Poetry High Tea inside we will light a couple of candles. If we are sitting out in the sunshine we skip that step. Each child has a little mug or teacup, an op-shop one would be perfect because then there’s no stress if there’s a broken cup by the end.
I will usually start us off by reading a medium length poem, either funny or nature-based. We then read and begin to memorise a shorter poem together by repeating it a few times and adding simple actions. The kids share a poem that they remember from a previous week or read a poem aloud. We try and say some of the poems from the previous week to cement these in our memory.
Finding a set of poems as a pdf and printing them or borrowing a poetry book from the library are good ways to source poetry. The Good And The Beautiful, an American company with homeschool resources, have a free pdf download that we are currently using with a lovely collection of poems. Here is the link to that resource.
Nature Poetry for Kids | The Good and the Beautiful
One of the first poems we learned was ‘Tiny Tim’, a variation of a traditional nursery rhyme. Here is the version we enjoy, though the wording is a little different depending on the version you use.
I had a little frog,
His name was Tiny Tim.
I put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water,
He ate all the soap.
But when he tried to talk
He had a bubble in his throat.
Another poem that we have enjoyed is the following by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice In Wonderland.
How does the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
The Good And The Beautiful also have a lovely book called ‘Poetry Party for Littles’ with lovely short nature based poems along with craft ideas. We have also enjoyed poems by Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson (lightly edited in some cases), though I usually choose excerpts from these as their full poems can be quite lengthy.
Poetry High Tea remains a treasured time for us to do together and can become a special part of the week. A yummy snack on a special plate, instrumental fiddle music, a kid friendly drink in an op-shop teapot and a few printed out poems and you’ll be well on your way to created a well-loved tradition in your home!
