Thursday, February 12, 2009

When Is a Playgroup Too Big???

I hosted playgroup last week and it was a bit of a madhouse :) We have 12 kids in our group....10 of them are 2 years old (or almost 2) and then we have 2 babies. Back in the day, the number of children wasn't as noticeable, they were either lumps or mobile beings that didn't interact :) Now they interact, feed off one another and all seem to have meltdowns about 45 minutes into playgroup. The house can get really chaotic, kids are bumping into one another and it is very hard to have conversations like we use to.

I love the girls in my playgroup (and their kids too). We have such a good time together and even get together on a seasonal basis for a MOMS night out to celebrate birthdays. Last time we played "Rock Band" and had such a good time :) I don't want to split up the group but what do you do???? It can be stressful to have that many people in your house at once.

It use to be rare that we would have all 21 of us show up for playgroup. My house last week was the first time that it had happened in a long time. Between our very busy schedules and illnesses, it is usually impossible to get the entire group together. There are also some houses where the children are enclosed in a small space and so some of the moms with older 2 year olds usually skip those weeks. But the weeks when we all do show up are crazy....what do we do???? I know that the weather will soon be getting nicer so having playgroup outside will be much easier on the host. But what do we do in the meantime? Any suggestions would be appreciated :)

2 comments:

Lisa said...

We had a playgroup years ago where there just seemed to be alot of kids. What we finally ended up doing was going to McDonald's play centers. (Course you have to be really good about wiping kids hands because those things aren't sanitized very often.) Or go to a mall where there's a little playground. (Same issue tho with sanitizing.)

Alot of people in our group ended up, over time, finishing their basements so that was good. Becausee it was more open space, yet it was contained.

Christina said...

You can always go somewhere else.. We have a place called Together in Motion that large groups of us get together.. It has large foam blocks for the kids to climb on.. It costs $5 but its fun.. Also, check out if your library has room.. The Medford one has a big room that they allow people to use and then each mom could bring one or two toys to share.
It's great that you have so many moms to get together with :-)

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