Themed Playdates

Thanks to a great idea my sister shared, three friends and I decided this spring to start holding "themed playdates" for our little ones.The goal was to do something special for our second-borns -- to give them fun learning experiences and social interaction with peers.

All four kids are around the same age (born in 2012). We decided that we'd divide up the planning roles in the following way: hosting/choosing a book and song; making snack; planning a craft; planning a few games & activities.

We've had so much fun! I never cease to be amazed at the creativity of my fellow momma friends (two of whom were teachers before staying home with their kiddos), and the kids love spending time together. We've taken a break for the summer now, but we'll look forward to resuming in the fall.

We had a few playdates this spring ... Our first one was a St. Patty's Day play group. I was in charge of activities for this one. I had buried pennies and plastic shamrocks (from a cut-apart necklace) in a plastic tray under a layer of baking soda. At first, I had the children use spray bottles to spray vinegar into their plastic trays. After someone got sprayed in the eye though, I quickly modified the directions to have kids just POUR the vinegar into the trays. The kids thought the foaming was cool (of course) and loved using tongs to recover the hidden items.

Ms. Julie had the kids string rainbow-coloerd Fruit Loops onto necklaces ...

... and then play the game of Seequnce together.

Aliceson held Nathan

while the other kids enjoyed eating her green fruit items and green shamrock cookies.

Kati ended by reading everyone a fun shamrock story.

A couple of weeks later, Julie hosted an Easter playdate. Aliceson had the kids decorated paper Easter eggs by painting bubble wrap and printing in onto the paper.

We enjoyed some popcorn-and-Goldfish butterflies

as well as grape-and-Peep kabobs.

The kids loved finding the Resurrection Eggs that Kati had made for them and telling the Easter story once they had found all six of them.

Then, the kids had to carry some silly plastic eggs across the room on a spoon. The plastic eggs "cracked" and had yolks inside if they were dropped.

A few weeks later, Aliceson hosted a Rodeo playdate. I was in charge of activities. I made some fun pool noodle horses (thanks, Pinterest) to use in the games.

Kati had planned a fun craft where the kids made their own stick-horses from cardboard tubes and paper bags. The horses turned out so cute!

I didn't get pictures of the other craft (painting bluebonnets with q-tips) or of my activities (playing follow-the-leader on the pool noodle horses and finding/acting out various cowboy pictures). What fun!