wrote:
My 3-year-old daughter and I are in a wonderful playgroup that we've
been attending since her birth. We've been meeting one weekday morning
a week, plus having once-a-month "mom's night out" dinners.

Most of the group is stay-at-home moms, with several of us working
part time. For the past 3 years, we've all been arranging our
schedules around this group because we really want to stick together.
Some of use schedule our work schedules around it, we don't take
certain classes because of the conflict, and so on.

Next fall, nearly all the children are starting preschool. Some will
go Mon/Wed/Fri and some Tues/Thurs, which means there is no day we can
continue meeting when most people can come.

Have you been in a playgroup like this that survived preschool and
stayed in close touch? Any tips on how to do this?
We're spread over a fairly large geographical area, so we don't
generally all run into each other as part of other community events or
organizations.

We've considered:
-- we will definately will keep having the mom's night outs, but we
don't think that will be enough to maintain the cohesiveness we have
now.
-- We might have 2 playdates a week, one for each sub-group. We worry
that this will deteriorate -- if we have a bunch of weeks where only 2
or 3 people show up, it will probably fall apart.

Have you considered alternating the days such that you have playgroup on
Wednesday one week and Thursday the next? If a solid core of you can go to
either one then the ones with less flexible schedules would still be able to
maintain contact with them, if not everyone.


-- We talked about meeting in the afternoons, but most of the
3-year-old nap then. Many people have younger kids too, who will be
napping for years to come.
-- meet occasionally on the weekend. Again, afraid attendance will be
low.

Any experience? We have about 12 kids in the group. The weekly
playgroups usually have 3-9 kids each time now.

My first time mums' playgroup went through several stages. Once we got into
the pre-kinder years we did experience the same sort of scheduling problems
you're describing but by continuing with the regular dinners and meeting
with the younger children while the older ones were in pre-school and then
school we got around them for a while. We'd also meet up after school in a
park for a picnic in the summer or in an inside playarea when it was wet or
cold.

Eventually, though, the need to meet for the sake of the children passed and
those of us who remained firm friends just incorporated those friendships
into our lives in the usual way and in recent years I have only really seen
the whole group (or what's left of it after 15 years!) at barbecues or
parties.

Tai