A Montessori Musing Place

     I want to give a huge nod of thanks to Susan over at The Moveable Alphabet for spurring me on to formalize our tea making activity. With a few additions, this is now one of the favourite activities of our Master year children. (The activity requires many skills that the 3's and 4's are still working on so tea making is usually done by the Master year children.) Now, when we have an observer in our classroom, one or two of the children will make tea just as Susan described.

Here is a picture of the activity.

     I couldn't find a small bell timer that worked and decided to use a three minute sand timer instead. The timer tells the children when the tea has steeped enough to pour.  (This timer so inspired the children that a few more sand timers were purchased and made available at our reflection table. This, in turn, transformed itself into another very cool activity that I will write more about at another time.)
     The little plastic box holds an assortment of herbal teas that the child offers to the guest for selection.  The only thing we teachers do is pour the hot water from the kettle into the teapot. 
     The spoon is to help remove the teabag from the pot once the tea has steeped.  The bag is put into the little white dish, and the tag is removed from the bag. Then the child carries the little dish to the compost bucket and deposits the tea bag.


 The teacups are kept on a small shelf that I've had kicking around my house for a while. (Montessori teachers are hopeless hoarders!)  I could never find just the right application for it at home but when looking for a place to store extra teacups, I remembered this little stand. It works  perfectly!