Our Poetry Tea Time

I am very excited about today’s blog post! I’ve been looking forward to it for a quite a while, and the time has finally come to make it happen.

Several months ago I started a weekly tradition with my younger siblings. Almost every Tuesday we get out the nice dishes, bring down my favorite poem collections, dish up something yummy to eat, and have our very own poetry tea time! Today I’m going to go through what I like to do for our tea time, from desserts to literature. I also took a lot of lovely pictures in anticipation of this post!

Without further ado, here we go!

To Start Us Off: A Prayer

The first thing we do every poetry tea time is say a prayer. This is a very important part of our time because it focuses on the Lord, and dedicates our time to His purposes.

I wanted the prayer to be a time when we could all talk with the Lord, but I didn’t want it to have that scary feeling of ‘praying out loud’ either. So for tea time we have been using the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) method.

The first week we each praised God for something we adored about Him. The next week we chose something to confess, and so on. By now we go through all four sections each time.

I find that the best way to do this is to hold hands around the table field with our heads bowed. One person is chosen to begin the prayer (saying it quietly to oneself is how we do it!), and when they are finished they squeeze the hand of the person next to them who then takes their turn.

The Food!

I’m going to be honest here and say, sometimes this step looks pretty pitiful. I wish that I was always able to bake something for our tea time, but that just doesn’t happen. There are a lot of times where I serve whatever sugar-filled snack that we have on hand, whether that’s packaged cookie or leftover pie.

In these pictures we have a mini chocolate cake. It’s a wonderful recipe for when you don’t need a lot of food but still want something sweet. Here is a link to the recipe, found on Sally’s Baking Recipes.

I often like to pair the baked good with a dish of fruit. Not only do berries or orange slices a healthier companion, but they are also lovely to look at on the table.

Poetry Books!

There are so many good books you can use for tea time! Look around your book shelves and grab whatever you have on hand! We had way more poetry books than I expected us to, and you might too!

Here are some of our favorite books to use for tea time. Most of them get used at least once a week, and some of them have several poems read out of them each tea time!

The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter: While some of her stories are a little long, I love having Beatrix Potter’s work as a part of tea time. There are few stories that are so perfectly lovely for tea time as those of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nuttkin, and all the others. The thing that makes this book stand out from all the others at the table is the illustrations. The watercolor pictures are simple but elegant. After the longer passages and poems from other books these are like

The Best Loved Poems of the American People: This is my favorite book of poetry I own. The poems are amazing (they are the best loved, after all 😉 ). They are on a wide range of topics, and you could probably find something in there for any mood you’re going for. All the poems are beautiful, high quality books of literature, but only a few would be difficult for children to understand and enjoy.

Everything on It, by Shel Silverstein: Anything by Shel Silverstein is bound to be a favorite at tea time. His poems are hilarious. Whenever my brother picks up this book we know it’s going to be a good two or three poems before he will put it down again.

Everyday Graces, edited by Karen Santorum: This is a wonderful collection of well known and loved stories. You’ll recognize a lot of your favorite writers in this book. What I love about it is the way Karen Santorum selects the stories by moral and theme. They are categorized by important character attributes such as honoring your father and mother (the first one).

Now We are Six, and When We Were Very Young, by A. A. Milne: These poems are easy to read and amusing stories. I had never read any of them before, but once we started tea time I knew I had to add these to the selection of choices! They are a very good choice whether you’ve grown up reading A. A. Milne or have never picked up his work before.

A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson: This is perfect for tea time with children because there are lots of lovely colorful pictures on each page. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote great poems about things that are interesting to a child.

Another option for tea time is to read through a chapter book together. I like this idea because it gives you something structured in your time, but we haven’t tried it for ourselves.

Some chapter book ideas that come to mind for this is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (by Lewis Carroll), Winnie the Pooh (by A. A. Milne), The Chronicles of Narnia (by C. S. Lewis) and Charlotte’s Web (by E. B. White).

Memorization

The last thing that we like to do at tea time is memorization. There are so many good options of passages and works of literature to commit to memory. Below is a quick list of suggestions in order of easiest to more complex.

• Psalm 23
• The Lord’s Prayer
• The Star Spangled Banner
• The Declaration of Independence (yep, it’s a long one!)

Final Thoughts

These are just a few ideas for your own personal poetry tea time! There are so many more, like listening to hymns in the background, having a special poetry writing time, or making your dessert together.

Have you ever considered trying this? What part sounds the nicest to you? Do you enjoy reading poetry?