Poetry Tea Time, November 15, 2016

It has been a busy morning for us, which is unusual for a Tuesday.  After finishing chores, having breakfast and getting everyone dressed, we rushed over to a friends farm to watch her goat give birth.  That was truly amazing, and will be another post.  We got home just in time for lunch and nap, and though we didn’t have much time before we needed to rush off to book club, we needed the peace and calm of poetry tea time more than ever.  

Today, we read from Poetry for Young People, by Robert Frost.  For each season there is a selection of poems - I love books like that, ones that you can use year round.  

A favorite poem of mine is The Road Not Taken, which I was happy to find in this book and share with the girls.  Going for Water was also a nice poem, and one I hadn’t read before.  This is a library book, but I have made myself a note in my planner to check it out in future seasons for poetry tea time.  We all enjoyed the poems, but most of all the peace in the middle of a busy day.  I am so grateful that we decided to bring Poetry Tea Time into our homeschool.

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Changing up poetry tea time

We really enjoyed our poetry tea time last week, the girls couldn't wait for this week!  With Halloween, we decided to take our poems from the book Halloween Stories and Poems.  Some of the stories and poems were a little too scary, so I made sure to read through them before reciting.

This was a fun poem called "I'm Skeleton", where the skeleton talks about how he scares everyone, but then a dog comes and he has to run away so the dog doesn't take one of his bones.  The girls thought it was funny.

Normally for poetry tea time, we just have snacks and tea while listening, but this week I wanted to add in some art time.  The girls were free to paint whatever they wanted with watercolors (we love these  stockmar ones and these by Roseart, we do not like these Crayola ones, but do use them.  The colors are so muted).

Sometimes it is more fun to just experiment than have a specific theme or goal in mind for art.  I haven't decided if we will continue to incorporate art time with our poetry and tea.  We may just do whatever fits for that week and what we have time for.  

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This means that if you purchase something from that site after clicking over from Journey Through Love, I receive a [tiny] percentage of the sale. Clicking through these links does not cost you any more than you’d already be spending.   

Poetry Tea Time

The girls love any reason to have a tea party, so they were quite excited to begin poetry tea time on Friday.  Poetry tea time is something I first heard about from Julie Bogart, the owner of Brave Writer. During this time, you create an inviting table (as simple or fancy as you choose!), have a couple snacks, tea (or drink) of your choice, and a few good poetry books.  

This weeks poems were taken from:

Favorite Poems old and New

A Child's Garden of Verses

and a very old copy of Best Loved Nursery Rhymes and Songs

The Poems we read were:

The Cupboard by Walder de la Mare (FPO&N)

Young Night-Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson (CGoV)

Old Mother Hubbard (BLNR&S)

We had pumpkin oat chocolate chip cookies, and echinacea tea.  The girls absolutely loved it and requested that we do it again this Friday, so I am going to try to make it a weekly thing.  I love many things about the "Brave Writer Lifestyle", and this is one of many I would like to begin incorporating in our homeschool.  You can read more about Poetry tea time in the book "Poetry Tea Time Companion" by Julie Bogart, and on Julie's website Brave Writer.

I am not affiliated with Julie Bogart, or Brave Writer.  The thoughts and opinions expressed on this and all topics in my post are my own honest reviews.  

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This means that if you purchase something from that site after clicking over from Journey Through Love, I receive a [tiny] percentage of the sale. Clicking through these links does not cost you any more than you’d already be spending.   

Our homeschool curriculum choices for first grade

I've talked about it before, but now that everything is finalized I want to share it with you.  We are following the Charlotte Mason Method, and mixing in a little Classical Education.  Those words probably mean nothing or very little to you if you are not a homeschooling family, and possibly even if you are!  Basically, it is just a guide on how we homeschool.

I spent months researching curriculums, reading books, reviews, talking to other moms.  My favorite resources to figure it all out have been Simply Charlotte Mason website, the book The Well Trained Mind, as well as the forums on the Well Trained Mind website, and an amazing group on Cafemom called Homeschooling Moms.  Finally this is what we decided on:

Math - Saxon 1
Spelling - All About Spelling, level 1
Handwriting - Handwriting without tears, my printing book
History - Story of the World, Ancient Times
Science - Outdoor Secrets, and we will be doing our own body curriculum after we complete OS
Poetry - Favorite Poems Old & New, and A Child's Garden of Verses
Personal Development - A Child's Book of Character Building, Book 1
Art - Drawing with Children
Music - World's greatest composers series, starting with Bach
Nature Study - using Hours in the Out-of-doors as a guide, as well as the Handbook of Nature Study
Reading - reading books relating to our Science and History
Literature - following the literature list on www.simplycharlottemason.com
Grammar (will not start until second semester) - English for the Thoughtful Child

Wow, so that seems like a lot.  But the nice thing is that with the method's I am using, most lessons only take 15-20 minute, and of course we do not do every subject every day.  We started Handwriting over the summer, and are about halfway through that book, so we are trying to decide if we should move on to the next HWOT book, or start doing copywork like the CM method suggests.

Another great thing about the method we are using, is that it uses "living books" instead of a lot of text books for subjects like science, history, etc.  So that means, my library has been an amazing resource!  It has saved me so much money, and so far, they have had every book we will need for the first month or two, or a very good substitution.

Wish us luck!