PlayGroup

For the last 4 months, I have been taking Samantha to a local PlayGroup that meets 2 Fridays a month. The PlayGroup is designed for children,ages 0-5 years, and meets in the preschool classroom. The children are able to play with all of the toys in the classroom and also partake in any of the art activities that the "teacher" has set-up for them.

Samantha really enjoys "going to school" and seeing all of her "riends," and we have not missed a single opportunity since we started going back in October. In fact, when the new little one joins our family, I still plan on taking both of them so that Samantha still has something special to do.

One of the activities that Samantha really enjoyed yesterday was painting:

(Please ignore the flattened hair due to the fact that she had just taken off her hat)

One of the things that I really like about this PlayGroup is that there is some free-time for the children to do whatever activities that they want, but there is also some structure built into the schedule. The children are allowed to play for 40 minutes, but then they must work together to clean-up all of the toys. Clean-up is followed by "circle time," which consists of singing various songs, and then the kids wash their hands before having a light snack. It is just the perfect amount of time; in fact, Sam usually takes a pretty long afternoon nap on the days that we go to PlayGroup.

Playing with all of the blocks