Book choices for today:

Tea Ceremony Shozo Sato
Tea for Ten Lena Anderson
Natsumi Susan Lendroth

Botany: (first circle)

Need for lesson – A tray with having a variety of teas. Pictures of a tea plant and those harvesting the leaves would be great also!

Botany 25
Boys and girls, we have talked about two main types of plants, evergreen and deciduous. What happens to the leaves of deciduous plants? What about evergreen plants? There is a kind of evergreen plant called Camellia Sinensis. This type of evergreen plants leaves can be made into something for us to drink, tea. The tea plant has thick leaves, dark green in color, and a thick stem. The flowers of bloom in white or pink and have a delicate fragrance or smell to them. We get tea from the leaves of this evergreen plant. Many tea plants grow in Asia. The countries of China, India, and Japan grow tea plants. How many of you have tried tea? Do your parents like to drink tea?
To make tea, the buds, leaves, and flowers are picked. The tea leaves are handpicked and gathered into wide baskets on the backs of the tea pickers. The leaves are dried in different stages to give us four main kinds of tea. They are black, green, white, and oolong. These four different kinds of tea are from the same tea plant, but its they way the leaves are dried, that gives us these four different kinds.
There are other kinds of teas called herbal teas. These are not made with tea leaves from the tea plant. They are called herbal teas because they are made from different plants.
On our tray we have different kinds of tea. You can get tea in already put into a bag that goes into the hot water to steep and make a cup of tea. You can also get the dried leaves from tea plant to make it also. Let’s look at these leaves and we can take turns to feel them and smell them.

Picture of Teas (from Tea by Catherine Calvert)

Tea
Tray of teas, hot water (it doesn’t have to be boiling hot, just enough to steep the tea bit), sugar, and honey. You can also enjoy a Japanese snack of seaweed, sushi, or rice. Play some Japanese music while the children try a cup of tea and a snack!

Tea and Seaweed Snack

Tea and Snacks

Discuss with the children that a tea ceremony is a very special event in Japanese culture. The host, or person having the tea ceremony spends much time in getting ready for the ceremony. There are different styles of a tea ceremony. In Japanese tradition, a Tea House refers to a private structure designed for a tea ceremonies, in special room called a chashitsu. Have a brief review of tea from this mornings lesson and let them know that they can now try a cup of tea and a food from Japan.

Have the children try a cup of tea and a food from Japan while playing some Japanese music. If you have a kimono, this is a good time to wear it!

*Tea House Picture (from: Japanese Gardens and Japanese Stone )*

Practical Life:

Teapot Water Pouring
Sake Water Pouring
Spooning

Pouring

Tea Set Pouring

Sake Water Pouring

Spooning

Geography: (second circle)

Need for lesson – Pictures of different kinds of houses.

Talk with the children about the kind of house they learned about that morning, a Tea House. Isn’t that amazing to have a special house made for having tea. A Tea House is one kind of house that is unique to Japan. There are so many different kinds of houses, around the world. Lets look at some pictures of them.