A Healer’s Geste

Tea Time Discussions

With two tea times now under our belt, I am a little more clear on exactly how this will work for us and how to prepare and what to expect. Here’s the nitty-gritty on this aspect of our plans.

Set-up

We start at 2:30 and have a treat/afternoon snack. We’ve had coffee cake muffins, oatmeal raisin cookies, and today will be scones. I hope soon to create a standard repertoire.

I make iced tea by putting a quart or so of water in a glass container with 4 herbal tea bags and 1 or 2 decaf green tea bags. I microwave it on high for 5 minutes. I let it sit for another minute or two. I put a cup or two of water and a bunch of ice into a pitcher. I take the tea bags out of the tea and pour it into the pitcher. Ready to go. When the weather turns cold, of course, we’ll switch to herbal tea in a tea pot. I’ll let the boys decide if we use mugs or teacups.

Format

We sit around the dining room table with our snack and tea, and I have my clipboard and pen. This last week I took notes on plain paper, but based off of that I now have a form to follow. I say a quick prayer about my own attitude and cheerfulness, since I am an authoritarian type and having fun with the kids is not my strong suit. I remind myself that my main goal is to get to know my children, to form and develop friendships with them, and to find out what they’re thinking. The goal is not to quiz them.

Procedure

First, I ask each child in turn (the three-year-old included) what their favorite thing that happened this week was, and also what their favorite part of school was. I do my best to keep this conversational. Speaking habits are part of what we are working on, also. We talk about the week.

Second, I ask the children to chime in with as many nouns — as many people or places or things — from the weeks’ readings (of all sorts) that they can think of. I got this idea from reading Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education, where listing nouns was part of her evaluation. So far my children have needed a little prompting to get going — reminders like, “What about geography? What about Shakespeare?” — but I’m hoping as they get used to it, they’ll not need that. Because they are boys who enjoy competition, I might begin tallying up the number as a “score” to attempt to beat out each week. It is a collaborative exercise, though.

Third, I pick one of the readers and take them through Buck Holler’s process for discussion literature. I was surprised with the quality of their answers on this so far, after some minor frustrations over figuring out the difference between something that happens to a character versus something that a character did. After it was Hans’ and Jaeger’s turn, Ilse wanted to tell me her favorite book, too. It was Barnyard Dance. I didn’t ask her to tell me if one should promenade two by two.

Conclusion

I haven’t figured out a satisfying ending, except to tell them that I’m pleased with them and happy they are learning so much and reading so well. I probably don’t say that enough, so that probably is the best ending for the week. It takes only about thirty minutes, and it is pleasant, as long as I remember to keep my tone pleasant and happy, instead of tired, thinking about what I’ll do after we’re done with this.

In case you are interested in implementing something similar, here is the sheet I created for recording our times and prompting my prompts. I changed out my students’ names with blanks.