My Young Child - Building Values Through On-Line Stories

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A Tree Grows: A Story About Patience And Diversity

Very young children are not able to understand the concept of patience but there are other aspects of this story that can be discussed.

Two and three year olds
Two and three year olds are very concrete in their thinking and have not developed understanding of time, so that the concepts of patience and diversity will be hard for them to understand.

What you can do
While children of this age may be too young to understand the values taught by this story, they can follow the different stages in plant growth. You can help them bring the story to life by acting out the story. The child can start off bent over in a ball to look like a seed, then slowly uncurl him or herself and stretch to be a big tree. You can also help young children understand that it takes time for things to grow by having them plant seeds in a clear plastic cup. Every day set a time that you and the child will look at the growing plant and talk about the changes they can see. It is best to do this with fast growing seeds such as beans.

Four and five year olds
Four and five year olds still are developing their understanding of time, but they will have experienced times when patience was required of them.

What you can do
Ask your four or five year old to describe to you when they wanted something, and had to wait for it. Point out how waiting for the day of a birthday or holiday can make the occasion more exciting. Also talk about how good it feels when they finally master a skill or complete a project for which they’ve worked hard.

Six and seven year olds
Six and seven year olds should have had many experiences where patience was needed. They may even have experienced failure because they didn’t have the patience to keep working at a certain skill, such as in a sport or in an academic activity.

What you can do
This story offers a wonderful opportunity to talk about being patient, and about persevering and working hard to achieve success. Be sure to explore how persevering makes us feel proud of ourselves and what we have achieved.