Child Made Flower Bouquets & Meaningful Work

By Natalia Pareja and Erin Boehme


Garden bouquets are fancy and simple. 
Simply take note of the beauty blooming around you, express your gratitude for the flowers and the plants with your children. Mention how wonderful it would be to have flowers in the house for dinner or tea. 
Give your child a small basket or bucket, model for them how to pick a flower with a long stem so it can get a drink of water from a vase.  Ask the plants for permission to share their blossoms. Remember reciprocity helps. Possible ways to exchange are gifting the plant a song, spoken work of gratitude, one of your hairs, or by tending the plant in it's home. 

Have a vase or jar ready for them to put each little flower into and tell them to make sure the stems are in the water so the flowers can get a drink.
 Little ones will spend a long time picking, singing and making wonderous bouquets of flowers for your home.
Put the arrangement(s) on the dinner table or out for tea time. Honor the care your child has taken to make your home beautiful, by saying "thank you for making our home beautiful" rather than praise like "good job". It's important to name and validate a worthy job done well. 
 
When children know they have made a meaningful contribution to the family, they will begin to look for ways to do it more often. You might find they are more capable of making meaningful contributions than you ever imagined.