Valentine's Day and God's Love

This Valentine's Day we had a playdate with some great friends over.  Though we did a wide variety of heart-themed activities, I wanted this to be a fun party that was Christ-centered as well. After a few minutes of mingling, I started our morning with a Bible story.  My Grandma got Read Aloud Bible Stories: Volume 1 for Silas for Christmas. It has 5 or 6 stories in it and each one is about 20 pages long with only a couple of sentences on each page. Translation: SUPER toddler friendly. We read the story about Jesus letting the children come to him and talked about how much he loved them.

Then we talked for a minute about how BIG God's love for us is. So big that it reaches all the way up to the heavens! "Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens... Psalm 36:5a.  What an amazing truth for all of us! We did this little verse activity where each child brought me a heart with the next word in the verse and we used the clothespin to attach it to the line. I had a little kit prepared for each child to make one of their own when they got home. Ours is hanging in Isaac's bedroom and he likes clipping in the hearts and trying to say the verse. This morning we sang the beginning of the Third Day song with these words and he kept saying, "Again, again." By the end of the morning he said the verse several times with a little help on the first word, LORD, and the reference.  If you'd like to try it out, feel free to use the free printable I created here.  (Note:  I included the whole verse in case your child is able and ready to memorize a bit more.)

I gathered up some items to give to the Mommies as my Valentine gift. These were things that I had received as gifts and had never used. There was nothing wrong with any of them, just generic gifts that I thought others might put to better use than my closet.  My goal was to catch each child showing love toward someone and let them choose a gift for their Mommy. This proved to be more difficult than I thought, not because the kids weren't loving but because while trying to multi-task as host and a Mommy myself I had a hard time catching them in the act. But, everyone left with a gift and I always think it's a good idea to begin instilling the joy of giving to kids at an early age.  The kids LOVED picking out just the right package for their Mommies! Lauren helping Jen open her gift. She got to open one because she used kind words. Her words: "Me wuv Isaac." Awww! Definitely gift-worthy. :)

We ended the playdate with balloons. Mandie and Jen have both hosted playdates recently and both ended it with balloons. It proved to be the perfect way to end the morning, so I followed suit. As I began pulling them out, I reminded the kids that God's love reaches all the way up to the heavens (just like our verse said) and challenged them to hit the balloons up as high as they could!  They had lots of fun and most reports I got from Mommies afterward said that naps were extra long that afternoon! :)

All in all, we had a great time and I was reminded anew what a blessing friendship is. All of these girls invest whole-heartedly in their children and it shows! I will definitely be trying to do stuff like this more often.




(Note:  All of our printables are free and available to anyone who can benefit from them.  You may print and make photocopies of them.  They may not be sold.  If you use them and publish a blog post about them, please be sure to link back to When You Rise.  Thanks!)

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