The Carrot Seed: Patience and Positive Thinking

I am so grateful to Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) for introducing our family to really great children’s literature.The Carrot Seed, a part of the  BFIAR book list, is about a boy who patiently waited for his carrot seed to grow and steadfastly believed that it would, regardless of what the grownups were telling him: “It won’t come up.” But it did, “just as the little boy had known it would.” There is a great background story about the book over at Anita Silvey’s A-Book-A-Day Children’s Almanac.

PATIENCE Young children are not likely to be candidates for any Patience Award, and a book that demonstrates patience and steadfast belief in something should be celebrated. At home, we point out to Little T when she is being patient. She is pleased whenever we notice and acknowledge her patience, usually in waiting for Mama’s attention to revert back to her from Baby Boy.

CARROTS We had a healthy and yummy snack – the carrot sticks pictured above. Little T had a great time peeling a carrot, and it has since become part of her pretend play. She usually gets two sticks to rub against each other, with one being the peeler and the other the carrot. For our Cooking/Baking day, we whipped up some carrot cupcakes. We did not follow exactly the recipe I found at www.allrecipes.com, but it still turned out great!

As usual, there are lots of learning fun in the kitchen. Little T whipped some eggs,

measured ingredients,

mixed and mixed,

scooped batter into cups,

and patiently waited for her labors to be rewarded!

ART The color orange pops in The Carrot Seed. I  wrote separately about how we made the color orange and how it is a gift to let children discover color on their own.

SEED We love planting! Though we did not have carrot seeds, we planted and watched monggo seeds grow from seeds to leafy plants in just one week. We also looked back at the time we planted sunflower seeds and were surprised to see a flower bloom after several months. We compared how fast the two types of seeds grew: quickly and slowly.

There are so many more thoughtful suggestions by BFIAR. It is truly “a treasury of creative ideas” that inspires our family to learn. The simple and gentle ideas are helping us make wonderful memories.

Make magic!