Sometimes we are fast, and sometimes we are slow.

January was Alex and my turn to plan playgroup. January weather in Kansas over the last 10 years or so has proven to be much like a yo-yo, fridged one day, summer like the next. Thankfully the yo-yo swung in our favor all month long, since we picked these activities on the 1st of January and for the life of me all I could find was a 10 day forecast.

Our first playgroup activity for week one was a trip to a local museum. Alex and I had the entire museum to ourselves and discovered little treasures we'd never seen before - and didn't feel the least bit bad about breezing through the entire four level museum in 30 minutes flat. Sometimes we are fast, and sometimes we are slow.

Week two we scheduled an open play day in the church cultural hall, hoping everyone would be looking for an opportunity to get out and run. The weather performed beautifully - all weather forecasts were hoping for a HIGH of ~10 that day. Kids played and played and played for two hours! before mama's and kids finally headed home for lunch and naps. Our little band of boys (I had picked up 2 extra cute boys for the morning) stayed a little later and enjoyed the big empty cultural hall all to ourselves.



Week three brought warmer temperatures (high 40s) and a hike around the neighborhood lake and playing on the playground. For this activity, Alex and I held up the rear of the group the entire time, never actually making it to the playground. He wanted to look and see and explore every possible inch of the nature trail. We listened to birds sing and watched them fly, we found frozen Osage oranges starting to thaw, and fuzzy green moss, and hoof tracks in the mud, and lots of sticks.



[Please note Alex's hat. GR made it for him to replace his rainbow hat which he's worn for the last two years, which of course is now way too small.]



Week four was our Kansas Day celebration. We planned a couple of simple crafts - a tissue paper sunflower (glue squares of yellow and brown tissue paper to a blue sheet of construction paper) and a Kansas facts coloring page - and had balloons kids could bounce and kick and throw around the cultural hall. Then we shared a simple but bountiful potluck lunch/snack before cleaning up and heading home.

I must say all the 2009 playgroups have been very well attended (including this weeks trip to Baker Bob's - by far the most popular!) ... other than our museum trip (which I understand not everyone heard about in time to come) we've had the same 20-30 kids at each one!