Our Family: Library Playgroup

Over the past couple of months I have been taking the two boys every Thursday morning to a Library playgroup...A friend of mine who lives on our street told me about it as she and her children have been attending for a few years now. It was a perfect time to start the group for us as Ethan is at such a great stage for it...I love seeing him play with the different stations and to start learning how to listen and take direction during circle time.

The first visit to the playgroup Ethan was uncertain about going into the room...He thought I would be leaving like during nursery at church and he wanted no part of that...but once he realized I was staying he loosened his grip on me and had a ball running around to the different activities and playing. I think his favorite stations right now are the blocks, the barn animals and the food station (he nibbles on the pretend food saying numnumnumnumnum...As I continue to remind him to "just pretend"..."don't put it in your mouth honey"..."go like this numnumnumnumnum" (haha).

I had been wanting to start a regular playgroup so I am thrilled that I found such a good one...The organizers are awesome and the lady who runs the circle time is really fun...We really enjoy our time there and I have seen big changes in Ethan over the last couple of months during circle time. At first I needed to hold him in my lap and he really didn't participate without me encouraging him or doing the hand movements by holding his hands...However now Ethan is able to do a lot of the hand movments by himself and he remembers a lot of the different songs...Each week is a little different but there is enough regularity for him to learn the songs...Ethan is also getting better at sitting quietly during reading time.

Ethan's favorite circle time activities and songs are:
-when the teacher brings the parachute,
- the sleeping bunnies song (The song starts out with the children pretending to sleep on the ground...then partway through the song the bunnies wake up and the kids start hopping)...
-puppet farm animals

It is so neat to see Ethan looking at the older kids to learn from them...Often he will follow suit with hand movements or sitting quietly if the other kids do...He is learning and it is so special for me to witness this. I love been a little fly on the wall and watching him interact with the other kids and grownups...My little man is growing up and I couldn't be more proud of him.

I snapped a couple pictures last week at playgroup below:

These playgroups are genious...And so easy for moms...All the stations are set up and ready to go and the organizers do the clean up...This is a nice break for me and I appreciate it so much!

The last couple of times Ethan has made a craft which is new for him as he up to this point has not been interested...I have decided to start taking pictures of all his crafts instead of keeping all of them...Then at the end of the year I will do one long post titled "Ethans Art Show" to showcase his creative efforts...That way I will not be saving bags and bags of artwork (like my mom did) and I will feel less guilty throwing his masterpieces out...Oh okay I will probably save a few lets be honest here..lol!