During the cold winter months, nothing beats settling in with a good book and a warm cup of hot cocoa. Apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way.
At our poetry teatime this winter, we gathered at the library with our poetry books and sipped chocolate while reading winter poems.
Some of our favorite winter poems came from the compilation of poems, A Poetry Teatime Companion by Julie Bogart of Brave Writer. The kids were especially interested in "A January Dandelion" since it mentions our capital city and was written by a fellow Tennessean.
Winter Poetry Teatime Snacks
At the prior month's Christmas Poetry teatime, the kids loved the addition of hot chocolate to our teatime drinks. So we decided not only to keep this drink choice, but to add a new twist with Peppermint Hot Chocolate. Of course, we added a few marshmallows to make the perfect cup of hot chocolate.
With our insides warming up from the hot chocolate, a cookie snack sounded perfect. One of our moms was kind enough to bake up some snowflake sugar cookies that her kids decorated.
Winter Poetry Teatime Decorations
Snowmen and winter snow trees seemed like the perfect decorations for our winter poetry teatime. And since we hadn't finished putting away our Christmas decorations, these were easy to grab and take to the library.
Of course, a giant penguin looked pretty cool on our table as well.
We also made some winter snowflakes by cutting designs out of coffee filters and then painting them with watercolors. We used these to decorate the tables for the children.
Winter Poetry Teatime Activities
This month we chose Concrete Poems as our poetry teatime activity. Concrete poems are not only fun to read, but to create. Some of the coolest books we've found full of concrete poems are listed below.
If you've never written a concrete poem before, they can range from very simple to beautiful creations of art. Concrete poems are shape poems. The words form shapes. Sometimes they are words that form sentences but are written in a particular shape. Other times they are words that describe the picture. Some of my favorites are those that use the size and shape of the letters to convey a thought or meaning.
To create our concrete poems, we first decided on an object we wanted to draw. Next, we lightly sketched out our object. Lastly, we wrote our poems about our objects along the lines of our drawings. These are some of the poems the kids created.
There are so many creative ways to write concrete poems. I love this idea of creating a poetry quilt from concrete poems.
A Brave Writer's Life in Brief
One of our local Brave Writer Moms combines writing with sewing in a million different ways. Her recent success is this poetry quilt where kids wrote poems together and then quilted them into fabric squares. For local Cincinnatians, this quilt will be hanging in the Green Hills Library all summer.
What are your plans for a winter poetry teatime with your kids?
Looking for more holiday poetry teatime ideas? Check out our full year of poetry teatime activities!
Hi, I’m Dachelle. I’m a homeschooling mom of 3 in the South. I love chocolate and have been known to hide it from my children. I can often be found reading a good book (or even sometimes just an okay book) and enjoying a jar of Nutella — don’t judge. I blog, here, at HideTheChocolate.com when I’m not creating book clubs and making lists…lots and lots of lists (it’s an addiction). Learn more…
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