Need Mothers Group Ideas

Hello everyone i am looking for some new ideas for our mothers group.

Our bubs are 18mths and younger, we currently go to houses every week but have started going to a few play centres and were thinking of doing this every 2nd to 3rd week to get out of the houses and give everyone a break (the mess is FANTASTIC at this age.. :rofl:)

We wanted some other ideas though to keep the kids interested, active and give us a break.

We were thinking of parks but coming into the colder weather were possibly looking for more INDOOR activities that are not too expensive.

I would LOVE to setup an area and have all the kids over and paint canvases or something but some mums are not into the MESS and doing ti at someones house might not be a great idea, wish there were some JUNIOR arts places around.

So please please please help me if you can, we are in Doreen, VIC.

i dunno what you have down there, but we have the state museum, science centre, art gallery and library that often have hands on experiences for kiddies.

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

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 :)

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?

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 :redface: 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.

ZF - yep get in touch with Playgroup in your state and they will give you a list of all the groups in your area and just tell them you want to join a new group.