How to Throw a Kid’s Tea Party Like a Boss

Tea parties are a great way to learn about culture and discuss topics in a civilized matter. We threw a kid’s tea party recently to teach the kids some proper etiquette and the value of a good conversation.

Kid’s Tea Party

My sister-in-law and I were sitting around discussing how we’d like to introduce our kids to more cultures from different parts of the world. With COVID-19 and the lack of finances, it’s not possible to travel the whole world to immerse in culture. We decided we could bring the culture to our kids. We want to do a new theme every month to teach our kids about different cultures and etiquette. We were so excited… and ambitious.

We decided to start with a kid’s tea party. They are super fun, and it makes you feel so fancy. We also decided that we could do our own adult tea parties whenever we wanted because they were so fun, and it’s just something different. I decided that it would be fun to share our ideas and how we did it on my blog. I will continue to share each month with the culture or activity we decide to do and learn about. Hopefully you can make it a tradition in your family.

Tea Party History

For a little tea party history, in case you were interested or want to share with your children, tea parties started back in the 18th century when it became popular to enjoy tea with friends while being entertained. Then Anne, the Duchess of Bedford, decided that it was a long wait between lunch and dinner without eating, so she started inviting friends over for afternoon tea and snacks. This is all according to River Tea.

Now tea parties are a regular part of England’s culture. There are certain rules, written or unwritten, that you are expected to follow when attending tea together. Here are a few that I found interesting:

You can not clang your teaspoon on your cup.
No slurping or gulping your tea.
Do NOT put your pinkie up. (I was VERY surprised by this one)
You can not do or say anything to offend the host or others at the table. (this should be common courtesy, eh?)
You can not hold your tea cup in the air, it must always be placed back on the saucer.

If you’d like more rules and regulations, you can find them here.

Very interesting. I’ve also been told, from a friend who has visited England and attended afternoon tea, that you are supposed to dress up and aren’t allowed to talk politics at the table. The host of the tea party is in charge of the conversation, and the participants shouldn’t change the conversation without the host doing so first.

It is all very proper and fancy, which I think is half the fun. If you have older kids, I think going over the rules and proper etiquette could be really fun. My SIL and I have a 7 year old, 4 year old, and 3 year old, so we didn’t go too much into the rules. We did pick like 1 or 2 things to discuss about proper eating etiquette, but that was all.

We wanted to focus more on conversation, and how to have proper conversations, and it actually went really well. I talk more about that below.

Alright, so how did we put this whole thing togeter?

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How to Throw a Kid’s Tea Party like a Boss

What do you Need?

There are a few things you need to make a Tea party great, I think, and then there are some other “detailed” things to make a tea party exceptional. BOTH are great and fun. It just depends on how much time, money, and energy you have. I’ll start with supplies.

Supplies

All good tea parties have a few supplies that are necessary…

A tea pot and tea cups

You can get some really good tea pots and good deals on tea pots at your local Goodwill stores. We had like 3 or 4 of them and they were all $3 or less. If you want something more new, and you’re going to make this a regular thing, you could invest in a nice one from Amazon. I like the ceramic ones the best. Tea cups are, of course, a necessity. We also got these at Goodwill with the tea saucers. Surprisingly, no one has broken a dish yet.

Plates

We used small pink paper plates, which I thought brought out some of the colors in the tea pots. You can definitely use smaller, fancier plates.

Sugar and Milk

We didn’t really bring out the sugar and milk since the kids are, you know, kids, and don’t care. We used our sugar bowl for fruit. You can still get milk and sugar containers, and use them for decorations.

Table Cloth

I feel like a nice lacy, white table cloth makes it all fancy. If you don’t have a lacy one, a plain old white one will do, or even a sheet. You could also place lace-doilies, cloth napkins, or name place signs to make it extra fancy.

Write on Food

Apparently, writing your guests names on a cookie is also a tradition and acceptable. We did an Alice and Wonderland theme, and wrote “EAT ME” and “TAKE ONE” on our cookies and scones. You can get a marker that writes on food. The Milano cookies are super easy to write on. We also added “Drink Me” to a couple of cute little glass bottles, which we found at the dollar store.

Serving Trays

Another great thing you can find at Goodwill stores are serving trays. They have some pretty nice ones, too. We got some heavy duty ceramic white ones for like $1.50. If you want to buy your own serving trays new, you can find a ton on Amazon. I feel like the ceramic white ones are just so fancy.

Tier Trays

Tier trays are a must at a tea party. You can also find these at Goodwill stores. They are also all over Amazon. There is actually a right way to place food on the tier trays: the bottom is for sandwiches, the middle is for scones, and the top one is for tarts and other bit size cookies. Who knew? We did not follow that rule.

Clothes

You could make your kids dress up and be a little more fancy. We had plans to, but didn’t end up doing it because they were whining about being so hungry. (We did a kid’s tea party for lunch.) The dress code for tea parties is semi-formal, so girls typically wear bright colored dresses or suits, hats, and gloves. Boys wear a suit or slacks with a nice shirt, but nothing black. Black is frowned upon for tea parties. (mostly for girls, though) It would have been so cute if we dressed up our kids.

Side note: It’s okay for girls to leave their hats on, but they are supposed to remove their gloves.

Food

The food is seriously the best part of a tea party. The common food at a tea party is sandwiches, biscuits, cookies, little cakes, scones, nuts, cheese, and all kinds of crackers. We like to pick out all the fancy stuff. You know how the checkout section at Ross has all those different foods and sweets? Just about anything you find there will work, haha. Here are a few of the things we had: (we done this twice, so that’s why there’s a lot)

Chocolate filled croissant (so good)
Water Crackers (these are just fancier crackers, really, any will do)
All kinds of cheeses: Gouda, Havarti, Cheddar, and Provolone
Bagel Crisps
Cucumber Sandwiches (If you want to be super fancy, cut out the sandwiches into shapes)
PB & J (of course, for the kids)
Mixed nuts
Fruit
Pastry Puffs (this is one of those items that I found at the checkout counter at Ross for super cheap, seriously, go raid it. Oh, and Tuesday Morning.)
Cheese Sandwich
Chocolate Biscuit Cookies
StroopWafle (I think these are a MUST)
Milano Cookies
Scones
Pretzel

You can do whatever food you want. We did do it a little fancier, but we thought we could reap the benefits as well. 🙂 Really any fancy cookies or crackers that you’ve never heard of, will do. haha.

Tea

You can’t forget about the tea. There are a lot of herbal teas that are good for you. We tried some blueberry and orange teas. The kids actually liked the blueberry one. You could also turn it into a iced tea.

You don’t actually HAVE to do tea. You could also do Kool-aid, lemonade, or a frozen drink for the kids.

What do you do?

So I understand that it is not easy to get kids to sit still and properly eat lunch. That is just asking wayyyyy too much! We made a small game of it. We did a few things\

Proper etiquette

First we talked a little about what is proper etiquette at a tea party. Again, they are young so we didn’t go into much detail, if your kids are older, this would be good for them. Here is the article again on proper etiquette.

Conversations

One of the important concepts of a tea party is the conversation. A tea party is not about being on your phone, or worrying about the latest trend. It’s all about taking a step back, slowing down and engaging in good conversation. We talked to the kids about what a conversation was, and how to engage in a good conversation. We did this by placing some kid conversation starters into a cup and letting the kids draw a slip of paper. We then had a conversation about that topic. Each child would take a turn answering the question and the others would practice their listening skills.

It was so cute to see them answer questions and talk back and forth. Some of the questions actually got them talking. It was like watching little adults. It was fun. And they LOVED the food, which keeps them present. If you need some kid conversation starters, there are some great ones here.

Kid’s Tea Party

We all had a blast, and we will definitely do it again. I feel like it was educational on so many levels, and the kids had a lot of fun. My daughter asked this week when we were going to do it again, so that’s a good sign. Maybe this time we will ask them to dress up. We’ll have to raid the Goodwill clothes section for some fancy attire.

And that’s how you throw a tea party like a boss. haha. 🙂

How to Throw a Kid’s Tea Party like a Boss

How to Throw a Kid’s Tea Party Like a Boss

Kid’s Tea Party

Tea Party History