Plant a Seed Day

By Leah Brennan - taken from Leah Brennan's Little Life Learning Tips

Growing flowers or vegetables from seed can be so rewarding. Seeing all your effort result in something beautiful or edible can be thrilling, but it also takes patience. Learning how to wait is a hard task for younger children but a skill they need to exercise often, especially as they begin to mix with other children. Plant a Seed Day is a great example of learning to be patient and whilst you’re watching, take advantage of pointing out some key points to your child.

Comments such as ‘Love Monster is finding it hard to wait for his seeds, isn’t he? And then relating it to them personally ‘do you find it hard to wait sometimes?” This helps to encourage reflection and insight and also sets them up to notice when they might need help to be patient. This episode is also a wonderful example of imagination, something young children are great at. Encourage their creativeness by pointing out that imagination has no limits “Wow! A hot chocolate flower! If you could grow anything what would you grow?”

Some more ideas to try at home:

1. Connect emotions to bodily feelings: notice when your child is struggling with patience and be curious about how it affects their body. You could say “It seems like it’s hard for you to wait, what is happening inside your body?” Help them observe if their legs are twitchy or they are jumpy like a jellybean. Connecting feelings and bodily responses help children further understand their emotional experiences.
2. Tolerating impatience: When you notice your child is struggling, you can remind them of Love Monster finding it hard to wait for his seeds to grow and being frustrated that TFB’s seeds had grown quicker. Help them to manage this emotion by getting them to remember what happened in the end – Love Monster’s seeds grew too, and they were amazing. You can say “I notice it’s hard to be patient at the moment, let’s think up some ideas to help you wait.” You could try ideas like distraction, helpful thoughts such as ‘I can wait’ or ‘It won’t be long’ or make up little games to play whilst you wait together.