Need Mothers Group Ideas

[tellytubby]

I take my DD to music every friday, she absolutely LOVES it!
And to be honest.. it is really something that you could easily do at home, for free!
Its basically a 45minute session, here are some of the things we do:

• sing a hello song
• sing a song which we can do actions to eg. i'm a little teapot, twinkle star, incy spider
• play 'marching' music, and march round in a circle, tapping wooden sticks, to the beat
• sway to soft music. To keep them interested we let them play with a doll/toy, and they have to try and get them to go to sleep, iykwim
• sing ring around the rosies, with actions, in a big group circle
• read a story together

If you wanted to could incorporate crafty ideas.

• Get old poptop bottles or something similar fill with rice, let them glue pictures onto it? This could be used as a maraka (sp)

Another great idea, that doesn't really cause much mess, is playdough.. gee wizz kids LOVE playdough!!
Bubbles?
If you wanted to really venture out you could attempt some kind of cooking theme? Like maybe get some plain biscuits, and let them put multi coloured icing sugar on them?
Colouring in pens/paper?

Library's also have great sessions. They sing nursery rhymes, dance etc. Some sessions even involve a small crafty thing?
Today I attended a playgroup at my nearby church? I'm not a churchy person at all, but it was really good, DD loved it! They had singing, craft, and just free play.

sorry.. kinda rambled a bit, lol

[Laranna]

Have you thought about turning your Mothers Group into a Playgroup? That's what ours did as the kids were getting too big and mobile for everyone's little houses. We looked around at a few centres in our area and we just started a new group at our preferred time each week. The kids get lots of freeplay inside and outside. They are all nearly 2 now so we are starting to think about more structured things like sitting down to eat morning tea, having set activities like drawing, playdoh, music, etc. It works well for the size of our group

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

Thanks ladies, i LOVE playdough and so does DD but i'm not sure how the other girls would feel about it.. we can give it a try.

Am loving the idea of maybe story time at the library, swimming, mummy & me movies.

Eluned - so what do we do, approach the local playgroups and say we want to organise our own?

[sloane]

i second the playgroup idea - my MG has just joined up with the MG before ours who have started a session at a local playgroup.

you can check on the playgroup victoria website & it has details of registered playgroups or i guess you could approach a local one? i went to our centre's open day on saturday & it's awesome - heaps of outdoor area with a cubby house, sandpits, slides & inside lots of different toys & art/craft activity. and they had a petting zoo for open day - i think i had more fun than DS i can't wait to get started! you need to pay a fee to playgroup vic (i think it's $25) and that's your insurance then your centre will have it's own fees.