How to Have a Healthy and Courteous Royal Tea Party

We’ve loved our family tea parties! They’re perfect ways to reinforce grace and courtesy lessons. And they’re fun! The royal wedding on Saturday gave us another reason to have a tea party. This time, we had a royal tea party with my 4½-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, my 5-month-old granddaughter, Sophia, and my 2-month-old grandson, Caleb (who’s half British). My daughter, Christina, Caleb’s mom, was part of our royal tea party, too.

Note: If you’d like to have a royal tea party, it isn’t too late. I think it’s fine to have a special party after an event, typically anytime within a month of the event. And any time of year is great for a royal tea party!

We always like our tea parties to be healthy and to encourage courteous behavior. We used cucumber sandwiches, a traditional English tea party food, although we made a healthy, gluten-free version. We skipped the sugary parts of a traditional English tea and instead included blueberries and cucumber slices. And we used our tea party as a great opportunity to practice grace and courtesy lessons.

How to Have a Healthy and Courteous Royal Tea Party – YouTube Video

Here’s a sweet 59-second video of our royal tea party. I was there, too, although I was behind the camera!

Video music: “Royal Tea Party” Song” from MusicCatRF.com.

Following are our menu, items used, and the grace and courtesy lessons we emphasized.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

Our Menu for a Royal Tea Party

Blueberries
Cucumber Slices
Cucumber Tea Sandwiches (Organic Cucumber Slices on Vegan-Buttered Wholegrain Gluten-Free Bread)
Warm Peppermint Tea made with hot water and peppermint tea bags (cooled to a safe temperature). Sometimes we make fresh mint tea, but we used tea bags for our tea party because of all the preparations that needed to be made

Making Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Zoey prepared the cucumber tea sandwiches almost completely without help! Traditional cucumber tea sandwiches use white bread and butter. We used an organic English cucumber, wholegrain gluten-free bread, and vegan butter (Earth Balance brand).

Peeling a Cucumber for Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Zoey loves cucumbers, so we often have sliced cucumbers, although we don’t typically peel them. I had Zoey peel this one to show how a traditional cucumber tea sandwich is prepared.

Using a Nylon Knife to Slice a Cucumber for Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

We love our nylon knife for kids from Montessori Services! Zoey used it to slice the cucumbers. It doesn’t slice them very thin, so I did help a bit by slicing a few of the cucumber slices thinner with a sharp knife.

Using a Nylon Knife to Cut Crusts off Bread for Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Then Zoey used the nylon knife to cut the crusts off the bread. Zoey doesn’t mind bread crusts, but we did this again to show how traditional cucumber tea sandwiches are made.

Spreading Vegan Butter on the Bread for Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Zoey spread vegan butter on each of the bread slices.

Placing Cucumber Slices on Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Then Zoey added cucumber slices to the bread pieces. I finished the sandwiches off with a traditional sprinkling of salt.

You’ll see traditional cucumber sandwich tutorials in my post with free royal tea party videos.

Items for a Royal Tea Party

Tray for Royal Tea Party

Ceramic Tea Set with Basket (I chose this set because it has a pretty basket and settings for 4 … many are only settings for 2. If you get this set, be sure to save the plastic inserts if you want to store your tea set in it. I put the inserts back in the basket {just cut the tall part down to fit easily} to safely store our special-occasion tea set. Unfortunately, that set isn’t as readily available, so it’s really gone up in price. This is a similar ceramic tea set from the same company. You might also want to check out other ceramic tea sets.)
Child-size table and chairs
Tablecloth
Napkins
Let’s Have a Tea Party!: Special Celebrations for Little Girls by Emilie Barnes (This is by the same Christian publisher as My Very First Tea Party. It has lots of fun ideas for themed tea parties. It’s a great reference.)
Multicraft tray for food and tea set
Flowers that Zoey helped arrange.
Food and Tea (See menu above)
party outfits (Zoey, Sophia, and Caleb are all wearing outfits from Gymboree.)
white gloves and hats can be used

Our Royal Tea Party with Babies

Serving Peppermint Tea at the Royal Tea Party

We should have started with putting napkins on laps, but we were all a bit distracted by the babies! Otherwise, we started our tea party as normal with Zoey serving the tea, blueberries, cucumber sandwiches, and cucumber slices. “Please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome” are always important at our tea parties.

Enjoying Our Royal Tea Party with Babies

It was time to enjoy food and company! The babies didn’t eat at the tea party, but Zoey loved all the foods, especially the cucumber sandwiches. Zoey does love cucumbers, though!

Ending the Royal Tea Party with a Curtsy and Thank You

I taught Zoey to curtsy, and she finished the tea party with a curtsy and her usual, “Thank you for the tea party.” We loved our royal tea party!

Grace and Courtesy Activities Used in Our Back-to-School Tea Party

We reviewed these tea-party manners:

saying “yes, please” or “no, thank you”
saying “thank you”
saying “you’re welcome”
dabbing mouth with napkin
curtsying and saying “thank you for the tea party”

Resources for a Royal Tea Party

Check out my post with free royal tea party videos for lots of resources for a royal tea party! Note: During our preparations and tea party, we played music from my free royal tea party video post.

Learn more about Montessori at Home or School: How to Teach Grace and Courtesy (my book for teaching grace and courtesy for ages 2-12!)