First Look at "Sense & Sensibility"

Our first Conversations with Jane meeting took place at our house. I broke out my real china that had been sitting in my cupboard for more years than I care to admit and searched for some real Regency era recipes to make for our tea time. Since Jane Austen is very British, we all felt that the occasion called for tea. I slaved, I mean, cooked in the kitchen all morning making Tea Cakes with Earl Grey tea icing (Dan was nice enough to help me with this) and Lemon Syllabub. Now I don't think that the Tea Cakes fit the Regency era profile, but they are unbelievably yummy and just made to go with the tea. The Lemon Syllabub recipe, however, was found here . Don't worry, we didn't use white wine, it was lemon juice all the way! After tea and dessert, we sat down to discuss our first novel, Sense & Sensibility.

And discuss we did! The girls had plenty to say and a few pages of notes! Three hours was hardly enough time to discuss the merits of Elinor's "sense" or Marianne's "sensibility," or just how much we hate Lucy Steele and Fanny Dashwood. I had an activity planned for the day, however, we only got to the first half of it. The girls read aloud from Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman. It is poetry meant to be read both separately and together by two readers. It proved to be quite a challenge and the girls enjoyed giving it a go, though Calleigh thought reading about insects was a bit odd (and dare I say, unromantic). :) The second half of the activity is to pair up and compose a poem for two voices for Elinor and Marianne, and that will have to wait till our next meeting.


The girls having tea and dessert. Starting at the left and going around the table we have Sarah, Aly, Tori, Calleigh, Skyeler, and Elizabeth. Hadley wasn't able to be there.

Look at all those books, papers, and notebooks! The girls were prepared for some heavy discussion. Tori even had her blanket :)

Pairing up to read Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices

Angel