Howdy! Here’s where I share Virtues Tree fun – something our family loved doing years ago (1.0) and is engaged in again (2.0) with many of you along for the journey.

Think of this as a creative tool (in development) to make growing character fun for families. Every couple weeks to a month you’ll find fun activities here to help in your family’s exploration of a new virtue. It’s also as a community of Baha’i mamas using and refining it.

So what is a Virtues Tree? It’s a handmade or store-bought tree that hangs in the heart of your home. It’s a focal point for character development. Each Virtues Tree family explores and practices virtues like pure-heartedness, justice, and kindness using the hands-on activities that are gradually being added here. The highlight of each virtue’s focus is the Virtues Fruit that is added to the Virtues Tree – like Purity Papaya, Justice Jujube and Kindness Kumquat.

Since learning to be kind and all starts at home, the focus here is on family use of the Virtues Tree. But teachers can easily adapt many of these activities to use in or complement children’s Virtues Classes, as we are doing in the one I teach with my oldest son using the Ruhi curriculum developed by the Baha’i community. I will share quotes and stories from our Virtues Class here because we integrate that into our Virtues Tree fun. The virtues are being shared in the order that we’re covering them in our class and home.

While this is geared toward preschool and elementary ages, you can adapt it to work for younger and older ones. And the learning isn’t just for the kids – it’s for us parents too. If you’re at all like me, then you get that we adults need to call on our higher selves to gracefully handle the daily challenges of parenting.

Let’s be clear: I’m no parenting expert. I’m just another mama with happy days and hard days on this school-of-life parenting path we’re all on. My desire to bring more virtues focus and fun into my family’s lives is not just motivated by high ideals. It’s also a way for me to help one of my sons in his struggle with anger and other strong emotions, as are these handy dandy tools:

So, if you’re looking for a fun way to encourage your children to develop beautiful character traits, you’re in the right place! Have ideas to share with the community here? Fabulous!

Please dig in and get started, sign up for email updates, and let’s get Virtues Tree-ing together! 

Want to read more about the Tree and how it came to be? You can read more here.