Posted in Tea Time

I think I'm going to try Mondays for our Tea-and-Craft day...it seems to be our most "slow" day at the moment! So, today, since we started the Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco, I gave our Tea time a honeybee theme!

We had biscuits with butter and honey, just like in the story! With tea to drink! I tried a new kind of tea - the tangerine orange flavor, I made it iced tea this time, added honey and strawberries to it as well! Mmmm!

The girls mentioned inviting Nana as soon as they found out today was Tea Day - so Nana came over for a few minutes to have tea with us!

We read the book, A Taste of Honey by Nancy Wallace and learned about WHERE the honey comes from, step-by-step! A very cute book that is perfect for small children! We also read a Bible verse from the Psalms that talked about God's word being sweeter than honey!

Then I had 2 simple crafts for today! The girls colored bumblebees --- with markers! (They just love it anytime I allow markers, which isn't very often!)

And we also cut out blue strips of paper to count down our trip to the beach! The girls keep asking how much longer, so I decided to do this! 12 days after today....and counting!

Posted in Tea Time

I have now read about this idea on 2 different blogs. Elizabeth Foss's, who also writes about it in her book, Real Learning - which I am LOVING, by the way! Also, Dawn's blog - By Sun and Candlelight - gives a WONDERFUL list of "tea and crafts" ideas. And, before you shake your head at me thinking, oh, I have BOYS, Dawn has 3 BOYS! I just love her blog! She has found a way to make teatime a time for talking about their faith as well as doing crafts...her boys love it. Of course, who wouldn't love a new drink and some tasty snacks!

I have been wanting to implement this tea time in our house, but just had not gotten together all my items to get it going. So this week I was determined...and we did it on Wednesday afternoon! David bought me a tea kettle at walmart and some herbel tea bags, various fruity flavors!  One afternoon while the children were napping, I decorated the table. I put on a tablecloth, lit some candles, got out a poetry book, our Bible for our story, coloring pages, our pretty tea cups and even dishes from my wedding china (which never gets used!) I figured even if we break one, at least we are creating memories using them instead of them not getting used!

The one thing I did not get done for our first tea-and-craft day was a special homemade treat to eat. I will work this in as we get to it...I would like to prepare something in the morning with the girls help and then they will be even more excited about eating it! So, for this 1st tea time we had apple slices and store bought cookies.

We read a few poems from this book with poetry by Margaret Wise Brown - which by the way, is an excellent book for younger children if you are wanting to introduce them to more "fun" poetry. The ones we read were about insects! Oh and we were also listening to classical music during this time!

(well, I searched for a picture of this sweet poetry book, but apparently it is a little hard to find! Anyway, poems are by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrations are by Tom Leonard.)

The other thing we did was review our most recent Bible story - Ruth and Naomi and colored a picture of the 2 ladies from the Bible. I intended to have a craft - more than a coloring page - but that will have to come next time too!

Here are a few pictures from our afternoon tea! And, wouldn't you know it, Caleb woke from his nap early and so he got to participate too! Yes, a 2 year old drank out of a real teacup, did wonderfully AND, I think he enjoyed the taste of the tea more than the girls did!!