At first, this seemed really boring. I mean, I love tea; I grew up in the deep south, so sweet tea was my drink of choice for most of my life (until I realized the perils of drinking all that sugar, and opted to save my teeth and my waistline by switching to - gasp! - unsweetened tea. Don't tell my ancestors - I'll be disowned as a Southerner). But a month's worth of activities on tea for preschoolers? I wasn't so sure.
Once I got to working, though, I found that I was really enjoying researching tea, tea plants, herbal teas (not actually tea, it turns out), tea parties, and trying out all sorts of fun hands on tea activities like painting with tea and tea-tee-tie-dye. Say that three times fast. I did tea-related relays, volume activities with tea cupa and tea pots, and a couple of math activities around planning a tea party for another class. All in all, kind of fun, and though it took some convincing, the teachers actually came around and ended up enjoying the theme, too.
I got to sit in on the "making our own tea" lesson with a kindergarten class, in which they first smelled all of the potential ingredients, voted on their preferences, and created a bar graph to represent class favorites (yay for Miss Eryn for bringing in the math).
Then they all got to make their own tea (most of which were cinnamon and mint) and try it. And then, of course, they got to make tea for the teachers. This was the best part, since they naturally included all of the "gross" ingredients in the teacher tea. Here is a photo of the tea Hannah and Isabel made for me:
I didn't disappoint them by telling them that it was actually quite tasty.
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