March Preschool Resources

Hi Preschool Parents,

I hope all of you had a wonderful experience this past Sunday with all of our changes!  In case you weren’t there, our preschool and children’s class moved to the “purple hall” which is the first hall you see when you walk in the doors of the school.  After a lot of hard work from a lot of volunteers, we were able to create some awesome new environments for our kids! 

Although the rooms look a little different, both in location and theme, what we do has remained the same!  Our 75 minutes or so each week, for our preschoolers all the way down to babies, gives us an amazing opportunity to teach your children so they can take their first steps in their knowledge of God and later take next steps in becoming more like Christ!  That is such a huge privilege and responsibility!!! 

Even though we LOVE teaching your kids each week, the teaching doesn’t stop with us!  In fact, we have only a small part in this!  Just think, there are 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week.  That means there are 10,080 minutes a week.  We get to be with your kids about 75 minutes, which is less than 1% of your kid’s total week!  My prayer is that you take time on a daily basis to teach our kids about God!  To help you with this and to reinforce what we are teaching on Sundays, we have two different resources for you.  The first is Parent Talk.  This is a resource for the parents of kids under the age of 2 that talks a little about what our babies are learning and how we can help lead them.  The second resource is Small Talk and it is designed for parents of preschoolers who are 2-5 years old.  Small Talk tells you what we are learning each week and it gives some practical ways of how you can reinforce the lessons at home throughout the month.  If you have any questions on how to use these, feel free to email me or call me at the church office.  I would be more than willing to walk you through them!

I look forward to seeing you and your preschoolers this Sunday!

Nicole Huff

God-Time & Refrigerater Door Cards

What in the world are you doing to put others first? Jesus put others first in countless ways, and He wants us to do the same (John 13:1-17). Me first or you first? Our words and actions answer that question every day. Do our words and actions help others experience Jesus’ love?

Here are the GT & RD Cards to do with your kids this week.

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God-Time & Refrigerater Door Cards

Hey Families!

Awesome night tonight @ Kidology Live!! It is so much fun having all of our pre-school & elementary aged kids together with their parents worshiping! If you weren’t there you missed a good time, so make sure to make plans to be at our next one which will hopefully be scheduled for sometime in late September.

If you don’t have older kids in the student ministry @ CCWC then you may not know that this upcoming week is our Refuge Camp. It has taken the place of our summer retreat the past two years and as a volunteer it doesn’t make me miss those week long trips to youth camp at all! Basically we pack up and head south, but only about 30 minutes, to a church near Stone Mountain. We spend the week ministering to people between Monroe & Atlanta. The teenagers get to give of themselves in such cool ways. Not to knock the youth camps, but I just love that the teenagers get to see how much God cares about others and learn first hand how to serve those who have so little or even nothing at all. It also goes along with what we’ve been learning about in CLUB 252 this month, SERVING.

With that being said, I will be at Refuge Camp this week and out of the office, hence the GT & RD Cards being posted on Sunday night! I bet you didn’t think I was capable of being so on the ball 🙂

I also wanted to post this funny picture of the 1/2 grade small group acting as the good Samaritans & bandaging up poor little Eileen! They covered her in like a hundred bandaids & cloth bandages and then carried her on a beach towel, like any “good Samaritan” would do 🙂

And FINALLY here they are, the GT & RD Cards,  after much ado…use them wisely 🙂

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God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

What in the world are you doing that’s more than you have to do?

Jesus did more than He had to for people, and He wants us to go the extra mile, too (Matthew 5:41). Every day we have the choice to “get by” or to go the extra mile. When we do more than we have to for others, what does that show them about God?

Remind your kids that we look most like Jesus when we’re serving others, or “going the extra mile”!

Here are the GT & RD Cards for the week

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ALSO, don’t forget to keep bringing in school supplies to donate to the kids in the Refuge Camp! This is an easy way you can serve others and get your kids in on it as well. We’ve opened it up to the whole church and asked another church to help us out as well because there are A TON OF KIDS living there!! Here are the things we’re collecting at Crossroads…

notebook paper, #2 pencils, glue sticks, scissors, boxes of tissue, crayons, small spiral notebooks & colored pencils

What we’re doing in the Dell household is spending $20 a week on a particular item, for example we bought 18 packs of glue sticks last weekend. I challenge your families to pick an amount to spend on school supplies each week and buy as much as you can.

Remember, God doesn’t bless us so we can keep it all for ourselves! This is a really cool way to teach that to your kids while helping other people’s kids!!

The tentative plan is to bring these supplies to the kids in the Refuge Camp on August 1st.

God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

Hey Families!

Yesterday we had a good time in Club 252! We talked about encouragement, which fell on a great day because we were able to remind the kids to encourage their dad’s on the awesome job their doing at leading their families. Hooray for all the great dads we have at CCWC!

We distinguished the difference between “Encouraging Words” and “Loser Words.” Encouraging words build others up, loser words, well they make people feel like a loser. Obviously God wants His children building others up with encouraging words. It’s our responsibility!

Here are the GT & RD Cards for the week.

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God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

Hey folks!

Once again, I’m sorry for not posting these until late Tuesday! My intent is usually to have the GT & RD Cards posted on Monday giving you as many days as possible to do all four GT Cards, but truthfully yesterday the intent wasn’t even there. I had class all day, a VBS meeting in the evening and then a project to put together all night. It was rough! But the class ends tomorrow and then I’m all yours for the summer 🙂

So here are the GT & RD Cards for the week. Sunday we continued talking about Responsibility and about how God blesses us but doesn’t want us to keep these blessings buried or hidden. He wants a return! Jesus told a parable to help explain this to us. It was about a wealthy man that went on a journey and left his wealth with three of his workers. When he returned he was glad to find that two of them had doubled his money but was disappointed with the third worker because he buried his money. I told the kids that they have all been blessed with different things from God and that God doesn’t want them to “bury” those blessings but instead to share them with other people! When we use what God gives us He gets the return, just like the wealthy man in the story.

Remind your kids that they will be held responsible for what God gave them and how they used it! The GT & RD Cards for the week will help your child to understand this concept more, so try to do away with a thing or two that crowds your schedule and spend time doing these with your kids instead!

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Okay, so I had every intention to post these for you on Monday this week, and from now on, but who else felt like yesterday was Sunday? I did, so therefore I thought about how I was supposed to post these yesterday as I was going to bed. Ooops. Hopefully you were all too busy hanging out with friends and family to check the blog anyways 🙂

Well here they are, better late than never! This week we strayed from our virtue of patience and concentrated on prayer since it was a rare, 5th Sunday. We talked about “taking prayer out of the box”, aka pray all day, when you’re scared, for your friends, when you’re worried & when things are going great! God wants to hear from you all the time, not just at meals and bedtime! Remind your kids that they don’t have to bow their heads or kneel before their bed to say a prayer to God. They can pray anytime, anywhere! In fact I bet nothing makes God more happy than to have His children talking to Him all throughout the day! Do these with your kids to help them to remember to “take prayer out of the box!”

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God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

We were in North Carolina for a wedding this past weekend and weren’t at church. But because we have EXCELLENT volunteers everything went great! Make sure to thank your child’s small group leader every now and again for making time to lead your child! Here are the GT & RD Cards for the week. Remind your kids that they will get a surprise at church on Sunday for being patient and waiting for it!

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Resources for your Family

I was not in the adult worship service on Sunday but I heard from fellow community groupers that Mike mentioned our GT & RD Cards to everyone. This makes me so happy because sometimes I feel like we have all of these awesome resources available and that the parents are forgetting about them. Well write it down on a sticky note and put it on your fridge, or mirror or forehead because these God-Time and Refrigerator Door cards will most definitely help you to grow your child’s faith and relationship with Jesus! Now they’re specifically for our Kindergarten-4th graders BUT Nicole is starting a new curriculum soon that will have similar resources for pre-school parents.

Okay, well since we got such an awesome mention from the stage I thought I would explain the GT & RD Cards to you JUST IN CASE you still have no idea how to use them. The GT Cards are meant to be a quiet time guide for your child to do during the week. There are 4 of them because realistically to get kids spending time with Jesus 4 times a week is a big deal! Kids are busy these days 🙂 but in the midst of everyone’s busyness I hope you’re teaching your children that NOTHING is more important than Jesus, and He wants to be their best friend. Here are example GT Cards with short explanations of each part. There’s one for Kindergarten and 1st graders, one for 2nd and 3rd graders and one for 4th and 5th graders. Just click on the one that represents your child’s grade level and see an example of a God-Time Card.

GTExp.K1, GTExp.23, GTExp.45

And for the Refrigerator Door Cards. They’re a little bit more complex but a very good resource for your family. Once again, these are for our K-4th graders known as our Club 252 kids. They go along with what the kids are learning about in Club 252. Click on the link below for an explanation of how to use the RD Cards during the week.

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Take the time to check out these sample resources and I will post the real thing tomorrow for you to print off and use this week!

God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

This week we studied the story in Exodus of Moses going up the mountain to talk with God and getting the 10 commandments while the Isrealites were losing their faith below. They should have been more patient, but they didn’t trust that God was faithful and that Moses, their leader, would return.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the recap video linked in this post.

Patience is hard! I feel it first hand right now! Ryan has a temp position and the supervisors have sent out a few emails recently letting the staff know that he will most likely be made permanent very soon. This is great news because we’re trying to buy a house. However, we don’t want to take out a mortgage until the job thing is more of a sure thing. So here we are, sitting, waiting, wishing 🙂 I will say that it’s easier being patient when you really believe that God is faithful, but some days I believe that more than others. I just continually pray the verse in Mark 9:24 over my life, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Bottom Line last Sunday: “Don’t get tired of doing the right thing.”

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