It’s impossible to think that Valentine’s Day is coming up in a couple of weeks. I seriously need to get my Christmas Tree down #notkidding. Annnyyyyway, even though it’s coming up alarmingly fast, Valentine’s Day is a great day for kids and traditions. Last year I made up this fun list of 50 things to do with families on Valentine’s Day. Feel free to print it out, post it on your Facebook wall and send it around. Which one might you do this year?
This year, I’d like to add another Valentine’s Day tradition: Write a Love Letter to God. Sit down and think of all of the reasons your family loves God: God is gracious and slow to anger, God is merciful, God is our friend… The love letter could be quite simple and a sweet way to connect a secular holiday to a faith practice. To make the practice even more magical, after your child wrote the love letters to God, you could say “Guess what? Now we’re going to read some love letters from God” and you could present your children with the book Love Letters from God! I think it would be memorable and fun. You could even make it a yearly tradition and stash the book away as the Valentine’s Day book.
As I mentioned when I interviewed the author, Glenys Nellist awhile back, it’s a gorgeous book with beautiful illustrations 
and the thrilling ability to read a love letter to your child with each story. One of the things I asked Glenys about in that Q&A was whether or not a board book would ever be available and… huzzah! It is now! It’s called Little Love Letters from God, and it’s a mini version of the original. I don’t like it more than the original, but I definitely like it just as much. Predictably, when we read it through the first time, all Samuel wanted to do was open all of the letters and read them. And you know what? It’s not a bad thing for a child to hear over and over and over again. Dear Samuel, I love you. I love you. I love you. There’s even a place to write the child’s name in the book if you like. Each story comes up with different attributes for God and a different reason that God loves the child. It’s absolutely the message that we tell our children every single day. God loves you.
So… tell your children that you love them, but also tell them that God loves them.
Here’s the fun part… Zonderkidz is giving away a copy of Little Love Letters to a reader of this blog! Yay! All you have to do is type a comment on this post saying who you would read the book to (or give it to) and you’ll be entered! I’ll use random.org to pick a winner and announce it on January 28! (Note: Zonderkidz requires that entrants have a street address — no PO Boxes, please. This giveaway is also only open to US addresses.)
Note: Please submit your comment only once, comments need to be approved, so they may take up to 24 hours to show up.
UPDATE: Congrats to Dena who was the winner!!
