By: Kaylee Simmons

Dancing, music, snacks, unlimited photos, and festive outfits were important factors in The Little Sweetheart’s Dance hosted by Supportive Peers. The dance celebrated its third year. 

“The Little Sweetheart Dance is a father-daughter, mother-son family dance that is sponsored by Supportive Peers,” Mrs. Rivero, the founder of Supportive Peers said. “This was our third year having it. It’s just a time for families to get together in a fun environment and just have a good time.” 

“It was for the kids in the community to come together and have a Valentines Day party.” Jordan Frantz, a senior at BHS, said. “There were a lot of games, dancing, snacks, and even a photo booth.”

The dance was held February 8 from 4-6 pm. “The first two years that we had it, it was at Bell Creek and Bell Creek was booked that day so we went off site to Sunset Farms, which is located here at Bellbrook,” Mrs. Rivero said.  “And we thought it would be a nice tie-in for the community and make it a little fancier for the kids, a little like a prom. Sunset Farms actually brought out one of their horses for the kids, so the kids got to pet the horse and stuff so that was fun.” 

The dance was led by the lead peers. There were also people in attendance doing different things. “At the dance I was in charge of taking photos for journalism class,” Frantz said. “I tried to capture photos that captured people’s emotions and showed the joy that they were having at the dance.”

“I’m the program coordinator for Supportive Peers,” Mrs. Rivero said. “And we sponsor the dance so we organized it and all that stuff.”

There was a lot of preparation to be done leading up to the dance. However, there was also a lot that the dance offered and had. “So you have to choose a location, find a DJ, it was Mrs. Schwieterman from the middle school, at our dance. Since it’s families with younger kids, we also offer crafts, so we had to come up with what crafts we wanted to do and snacks. We had to set up the ticket sales, we had to advertise and create flyers, and find a photo area or how ever we were going to do pictures,” Mrs. Rivero said.

“There were some little Valentine’s crafts, Bingo, we had guess the candies, which is like a little jar with candies in it and you guess how many, we had little balloon animals, a magician, and some coloring,” Rivero said. 

This year supportive peers sold 483 tickets. That is a record high number and around 170 more tickets than last year. 

“I thought the dance went very well,” Frantz said. “I really enjoyed it because I saw a lot of people having fun, smiling, dancing and I really liked it because it wasn’t just kids. I noticed when there were kids there were parents and grandparents. It seemed like a really big community and family event.” 

“I think that the Little Sweetheart Dance did a great job of including everyone,” Frantz said. “I noticed a lot of kids who weren’t even in Supportive Peers were at the event, and I just think the event brought the community together for Valentine’s Day and I thought it was a really cool idea.”