Parents, please take a moment to mark your calendars. The following are important dates that you do not want to miss:
I had planned on focusing my TFA Today message this week on the history of Valentine’s Day. I had a ‘good’ draft in progress, however, at Monday morning’s prayer with The First Hope team, Jennifer Stilling shared a much better account of Valentine’s Day’s Christian beginnings. Her message from WEL’s devotion is below. Sending love and blessings to our TEEP families!
Everyone is excited to celebrate Valentine’s Day this week. Valentine was a Christian young man who lived in Rome in the third century. According to legend, he was deeply in love and planned to get married soon. At that time, Christianity was illegal and all Christians were declared guilty of treason. Rather than deny their Savior, though, many Christians boldly confessed their faith in Jesus. Valentine was one of those confessors who remained true to Christ and was arrested.
While he was in jail, awaiting his death in the arena, Valentine wrote a number of beautiful, impassioned letters to his would-be bride. He assured her of his great love for her. But he also made it clear that first place in his heart was reserved for Jesus, his Savior. History tells us that on February 14, in the year 269, Valentine was put to death, martyred for Jesus Christ. In the year 496—after Christianity was an accepted religion—the church declared February 14 to be St. Valentine’s Day.
While the Christian significance of this day has been pretty well forgotten by now, we can let this background for Valentine’s Day bring us past superficial sentimentality to the greatest love of all—the love of God for the world. Jesus showed true love by giving his life for us on the cross in order to pay for our forgiveness so we could have eternal life in heaven.
The sacrificial love of Jesus touches our hearts and fills us with gratitude. It moves us to show “true love” to one another. “True love” is not just sweet emotions, but a commitment to help, regardless of the cost or consequence. The love we show to the children and to one another begins with the knowledge and joy of knowing that we are God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved. Filled up with God’s love, we will be kind and loving toward others on Valentine’s Day and always.
Our 3’s have been going to chapel with Pastor Derrick for the last couple of months. They absolutely love this time with him and Pastor Derrick does such an incredible job teaching our sweet friends about how much our God loves each and every one of them. Their time together is full of singing, dancing, prayers and a thoughtful message. Before they leave, Pastor always gives them a special token (bracelet, heart, sticker) as a thoughtful take away so that they will remember the message. We are so thankful for his faithful service to blessing our preschool.
During the past week, we are excited to announce the we have added (2) additional learning opportunities to our day. Each week, our 2’s and 3’s will be going to music with Mrs. Angie Elkins. We are so excited that she is willing to partner with our preschool and will be blessing our sweet friends with lessons about music and movement fun!
Every other week, our 3’s will be attending art with Mrs. Amy Talley. She brings such a wealth of gifts to our preschool and will be working with our preschoolers on so many fun art projects. Be sure to mark your calendar for Wednesday, April 19th and Thursday, April 20th as we will be show casing our master artists (ages 8 weeks-3’s) at our 2nd Annual Preschool Art Show.
This week we celebrated Valentine’s Day. It was such a sweet week! Each class that I visited or passed by my office was so excited to tell me about their Valentine’s they were going to be exchanging, or what they had celebrated at home. The sweet voices echoed up and down the halls as they wished all of us “Happy Valentine’s Day”. My favorite by far was a sweet 2 year old who in the parking lot who told me he had “love day in my quack-quack” (translation: Valentine’s cards in his back pack.) Another sweet friend told me “Happy Card Day”. Out of the mouth of babes…..
During our daily morning greeting time together, we talked about what Valentine’s Day means and who loves us. We decided together that it means a “day to share love”. I love this thought and thought it was so simple yet a perfect way to share how we can best celebrate on this day! We concluded with a hand hug and each friend gave a hand hug to one another before they left to go back to their classroom.
As Christians, we are called not only daily to share love but at all times. Proverbs says “A friend loves at all times”. It is my prayer for my sweet preschool friends to remember that God calls us to love-even in the hard times, even when a friend is not sharing or using kind words. I am thankful to a God who models us this love so perfectly for us! Happy “Day to Share Love” Day, sweet friends!
Happy Birthday to our Preschool Friends During the Month of February:
Welcome New Friends to Our School Family:
Welcome, Ava Welcome, Regina
Congratulations to Kai on becoming BIG BROTHER to Kowen