About ten years ago, I went searching for ways to make learning about virtues fun for my preschooler. It was so hard thinking of how to help this non-stop spirited kid find his inner gems. That is, other than the ones that shone brightly and were full on amazing: like sleep-resistant, inexhaustible-energy, and the determination, will, and risk-taking of a mad professor meets superhero in a tiny body.

What I would have given for a button on his remote control that would make him obedient and cooperative. Or just sleep for heaven’s sake! I was seriously tired and struggling to find ways to honor his spirit while inspiring it to shine in new ways.

That’s when I found a passing reference in the Family Virtues Guide to create a virtues tree with fruits representing the various virtues that could be hung on it. That sounded fun and concrete enough for our son.

The next day, my son and I painted a huge tree on a large piece of poster board and fell in love with it. Our creative virtues exploration took off.

So we excitedly focused on a new virtue every month or so, finding books to read about each virtue, quotes to memorize, setting goals to put it into practice, and tracking our progress. The highlight of the end of each virtue exploration was when my son would painstakingly create a beautiful fruit representing that virtue to hang on our tree.

The tree’s beauty increased each year as new fruits were added, sometimes with long breaks in between because that’s life. It became a focal point in our home that resonated with our growing family.

While a lot of fun, the Virtues Tree did not turn our children into instant angels or make parenting super-easy. But it did give us a positive tool to help guide our sons’ character development and made it a lot of fun for all of us!

So when my husband and I launched our small side business Tender Sapling in 2012 to offer products and ideas to help kids “grow noble” – cultivate their virtues, world citizenship, and sustainability – my husband had the idea to share the Virtues Tree concept with the world.

I was fascinated to learn that the idea of the virtues tree wasn’t a modern concept. It was about a thousand years old! Of course, humanity has always been interested in character development or moral education.

So it really shouldn’t have surprised me that the virtues tree was a staple in medieval Europe. There Christian monks depicted the seven cardinal virtues on a tree of virtues (arbor virtutum), which even became integrated into family trees!

Over time, we heard from friends that they’d like to do something similar to our Virtues Tree, but were short on time to create a tree and fruits. That’s when we commissioned my aunt-in-law Margaret Bucher, a talented watercolorist to help create this beautiful Virtues Tree and Virtues Fruits for Tender Sapling:

Before ordering 1,000 posters of the beautiful tree, we found there’s lots of interest in Virtues Tree activities and that many families would choose to create their own tree if they could. In the meantime, we put Tender Sapling on the back burner because that was the right thing to do for our business and family at that time.

Since I’m committed to giving my six-year-old son a Virtues Tree experience that he’ll remember (beyond eating glue and paper off the craft table while his older brothers made fruits back when he was a toddler), we’re doing it again at home.

Enter Virtues Tree 2.0.

And since our children’s Virtues Class has gone through all the Ruhi curriculum levels and are back to grade 1/Virtues again, we decided to incorporate the Virtues Tree fun into the class and at home between classes to enrich the Ruhi curriculum. The families in our class are excited to use Virtues Trees in their homes too as a tool to help their children explore and practice what is introduced in class – yay! I’m especially touched and encouraged by one of my fellow moms in the class, who sends me enthusiastic comments, offers to help, and pictures of her fruiting Virtues Tree!

This tree isn’t just a grove, but now a forest…

Now more parents are involved too – both the parents from our Virtues Class and now also Baha’i moms who responded to an invitation to join me on a journey to engage my children in intentional, creative, and fun hands-on character development.

I’m so excited because there’s lots I can learn from you as we travel this path together. Plus – let’s be honest – I might not deliver fully on this idea if it were just me doing it for my family!

Thus this blog was born to make it easy to browse the Virtues Tree activities as they develop, share our Virtues Tree experiences with each other, and create a community. I’m so grateful to have you along for this ride. Thank you for pioneering this project with me!

If you’re not yet involved, just sign up for email updates and get started!

And thanks to the mamas who advised me to go boldly and speak from the heart about my mothering journey beyond just the tree. Mama elefant thanks her sisters!