[Tea] 🎉 Let's Throw a Learning Party!

Welcome to "Tea with Julie," a weekly missive by me, Julie Bogart. My wish is to give you food for thought over a cup of tea to enhance your life as an educator, parent, and awesome adult. Glad you're here. Pinkies up!
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Cincinnati, June 29, 2024

Hi Friend,

After I'd finished reading a book to my kids or if we were interested in exploring a subject together, whenever I asked: "Shall we throw a party?" they never said, "Nah. Not interested." There's something about the energy of parties that draws children right in! I learned early in my homeschooling career if I wanted something taught and retained, a party was the way to do it!

Then I thought back to my childhood and saw a thread!

My parents liked parties, and my mom (who had been a school teacher before I was born) had a special affection for all things academic. When I was in fifth grade, she helped me organize a “Back-to-school Brunch” (all this alliteration!). We invited ten of my friends for a morning of omelettes, pastries and games.

Party favors included new pencils with psychedelic designs on them, groovy 1970s stickers, pink erasers, and Pee-Chee folders. We played games like “unscramble the school words” where each girl had a sheet of paper with typical words related to school all mixed up. We raced to see who could unscramble them the fastest. We covered a text book using paper bags, scissors, and tape (in a race). The idea was to make the return to school something to celebrate, rather than dread. And it worked!

Homeschooling also has its varieties of traditions: the brown boxes from UPS that bring new, unused books; the ease of finding pencils because at the start of the year, there are lots of them; the joy of starting a new read aloud and snuggling together again on the couch; the resumption of poetry teatime that draws the family together once per week…

Something to Remember

We try to see things through our kids' eyes, but sometimes our own weariness sets in and we forget that children still need:

surprises,
specialness,
treats,
awe, and
wonder – in large doses!

When we hit a wall where life becomes ho hum and kids want to do something, my family throws parties. Real parties. Not the diluted kind that are veiled attempts to coerce learning, but the kind that feature snack foods with sugar and red dye #2, mud and loud music. Oh, and every one of our parties has some version of “pin the tail on the donkey.” (When we threw a party about the California gold rush, we played "Pin the Gold Nugget" on a hand drawn map of Sutter Creek.)

Because of Noah's interest in the Gold Rush (California history) at age ten, we invited his homeschool friends to our neighborhood where we held our day long bash. We put sand in a sand box, buried fool’s gold, rigged a hose to reach the makeshift rockers, and provided punctured pie plates to invited guests to pan for gold. We built a stand where you could exchange gold for pennies and buy root beer or licorice. We fired up a camp stove and served pork ‘n beans. Guests brought bed rolls. We sang “O Susanna” and whittled wood.

Party guests came dressed in their western clothes and were given notecards with descriptions of who they were for the day. Noah had researched various famous people as well as a few made-up, yet likely, characters of the period.

What a party! I’ll never forget how the boys began hammering boards together to make some kind of elaborate sifting mechanism (tools and wood provided) while the girls, instead, went straight to the sandbox to dig for gold. After about fifteen minutes, a six-year-old girl screamed, “GOLD!” and just like 150 years before, everyone dropped their hammers and shovels and plunged their hands directly into the muddy sand.

Those who struck it rich, flaunted two cups of root beer to show-off their new wealth.

It Takes Time

To plan that party took us six weeks…every day. We didn’t do anything else (besides the usual changing diapers, scrounging for food, and an occasional wipe-down of toilets). No math (except the calculating that went with building, sewing, measuring, and scales), no reading (except for historical fiction and library books about the Gold Rush), and no writing (except for the notecards that described 12 characters for the party, invitations, and instructions for how to play the games).

We’ve traded “school” for parties many times since with the following themes: a solar system tea party (at night of course), a Japanese dinner, a Farmer Boy breakfast, an Indian festival, a Medieval feast, an American Girl day, a re-enactment of the pony express (on bikes), a Moroccan wedding and more.

Why study when you can party with all the benefits (and good food)?

Yes, parties take some energy—but it’s all the good kind! Kids get into it. And they learn!

Want to learn more? Listen to my free webinar, "The Power of a Book Party." Here's the replay.

Warmly,

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