Laughter in the hallway, songs coming from the fellowship hall, joyful screaming and chasing and tagging on the playground, climbing as high as little legs are able and occasionally tumbling to the ground, a strenuous game of kickball, King Tut masks, even cursive writing and diagramming sentences …all are examples of ways we strive to live out our core value of nurturing joyful childhood experiences. (For me, that last one, diagramming, is a stretch! But, you should have seen the gleam in all the 3rd graders’ eyes when they were at the whiteboard with Expo marker in hand.)
There is joy in a job well done. There is joy in learning a new thing. There is joy in doing a HARD thing, whether it’s climbing up the slide backwards when you’re 2 (GREAT activity for muscles!!), sliding down the fireman’s pole at 3, FINALLY mastering the monkey bars or the books of the Bible or days of creation…the list is endless. Your children are the biggest they’ve ever been each day you drop them at CCS. They are learning and growing and stretching all in a loving community that cares about their hearts AND minds.
Childhood is short. It’s magical. We want to remember that and nurture that for the children we serve. They are discoverers and explorers at heart, making sense of the world around them. The work of childhood is play, so whether that’s a music class, finger painting, planting seeds, hopscotch, or a whole host of other activities, we want those experiences to be joyful! God created this world for His glory and our joy, and we hope to help our students experience that joy as they explore his amazing creation through His word and His world.
The play-based nature of our program allows us to lean into this core value mightily, with our time, money, staffing allocations—we want your child discovering, uncovering, attempting, creating, learning, seeking out joyful childhood experiences while they’re with us. I KNOW a fair amount of sand leaves our playgrounds each day and winds up on the floorboard of your car. Your kids come home dirty, with paint up to their elbows and grime under their fingernails. This is not accidental. This is free play at its finest. This is them having those “joyful childhood experiences” in the safe and loving environment of Christ Covenant School.
If I’m honest, it begins with our staff: we know who and whose we are, and from that place of being loved by the God who created us, we are filled with joy! Jesus solved our fundamental problem in life—how could we NOT be joyful? And joy is infectious. More is caught than taught (in everything), and the children feel (and catch) our la joie de vivre!! As a staff, we pray regularly that CCS would be a place where your child experiences joy daily, and we pray that that would point them to The Lord, the source and wellspring of all joy.
