Thinking of starting a playgroup for knackered mums/parents/carers - would this work do you think?

[inthekitchensink]

I’m in the early stages of researching setting up a playgroup for preschoolers at the local hall, where adults can come and get shit done on their phones, or read or whatever with tea/coffee/biscuits - while I play with the children.

All the playgroups I went to with my toddler encouraged parental interaction and really all I wanted was somewhere I could get admin done for an hour or read mumsnet while my child had quality play & learning.

I’m a montessori practitioner with a few spare hours a week and really miss working with kids, but don’t want to do it full time. I would provide montessori materials to play with, arts and crafts, story time.

Would you be interested in something like this or am I just projecting? !

@toastbuttababey

As a suggestion, I’d personally love weekend childcare where I can leave the kids and go home to sleep!! I’d pay whatever it cost! 🤣

I’m actually looking long term into a reverse b&b - small garden studios set up around a classroom and forest school set up. Mums have a cabin to themselves with a recliner armchair, books, tea & coffee & cake. Children looked after by staff. No idea how to make that idea work!

@MoiraNotRuby

OP you sound wonderful. Have you thought about asking the existing stay and play church group if you could collaborate, and put on an extra session called 'Time for Tea' or something like that. Basically duplicate the existing set up but sell it to the existing organisers that this is aimed at tired/busy parents who would like their children to enjoy the wonderful play group that the church is brilliant at providing, but no expectations that the parents need to get stuck in. They can relax whilst you have it covered.

Stay and play- join in
Time for tea- sit back and rebuild your energy

Brilliant idea, I will look into this thanks

Ha the parents childminders at the toddler group I used to go to never joined in. But I like the idea of it being organised and lead rather than a free for all. I'd just advertise as a toddler group, can you say it's Montessori or do you have to pay someone for that?

Maybe branding as a ‘club’ would work. In holiday camps etc. that always implies to me that the intention is that at most parents are spectators to the actual activity.

And a heavy emphasis on the parents seating arrangements and refreshments available.

Invitation to play - the montessori way
Parents/carers required to stay but involvement not expected as we encourage independent play
Activities selected for the theme of the week (space/rainforest/under the sea/evolution etc) with a variety of trays for practical life skills, sensorial, literacy & numeracy.
Supervised play session with cake & hot drinks provided for adults.
£3 per session
Is this a better idea?

I think it sounds like a great idea in practise OP as long as you’ve worked out things like adult/child ratios etc
I bloody hated the toddler groups where I had to constantly interact with my son. I know that sounds absolutely terrible - but it was only because it was almost like a competition in performance parenting constantly, and I felt like I was being patronised or judged (either by other parents or health visitors etc)
My favourite group was there were toys etc in the middle and the kids just got on with it - rather than more structured activities or crafts. I spend all day going activities and giving 100% to my son and I love it but it would be helpful to have a break!

I've often thought about something similar as a teacher OP.

£3 a session is way too cheap IMO. We pay £7 for a 45min session of football! Around here I'd charge at least £8-9 for an hour.

I really like how you’ve worded it OP.

That sounds fab! I agree you should charge more - my local normal" church hall" playgroup charges £3.50

You should definitely charge more. I'd pay around £7-8 per session, especially if it was drop-in and you didn't have to sign up to a block of sessions.

Especially if you were doing messy play - slime, jelly, paints, coloured rice etc. I looked and looked for a messy play session around here when my DS was smaller but there wasn't one. I'd have paid around £9-£10 for a messy play session.

Op you sound fab, and I think its a brilliant idea I would defo use something like this and wish they had similar to where I live.

I think £3 too cheap especially if providing coffee and cake. £5 is fine if that is provided. Depends on your area as well I guess and what’s normal pricing structure

You could section it off. Say maybe a small section with tables and chairs for parents who want to do work at laptops, a section that is more communal for friends to sit and have chats. And the other half for the kids.
Tell the parents you intend to entertain them but they need to stay, much like an older child’s dance/tennis.

And you could sell tea/coffe and nice cakes etc.

For a while, SureStart centres ran stay and play sessions where they deliberately didn't have chairs for the adults, they didn't provide any refreshments and the staff were tasked with 'encouraging' parents to play with children. I'll never forget going there when my DS was just over 2 and my DD was a tiny baby. I was still recovering from the birth and I was breastfeeding and I couldn't sit down. I had to drag DS out of their crying because I had to go home to feed DD. It was fucking ridiculous. I had a massive go at the director of our local SureStart about it. It's so petty and mean and just plain nasty to offer a place to go for exhausted parents and then to treat them with such contempt. I'm pretty sure it's not the policy anymore - I think they worked out that treating parents like utter shit is not the way to attract them to the centres and improve child outcomes - but it shows you the stupidity that goes on in those places.

Anyway, after that longwinded rant, what I wanted to say was, when my two were little I ran a toddler group where the attitude was very much that no one was expected to go near their children unless necessary. If anyone came with a baby there was always someone ready to offer to carry them about (if the parent wanted it) and the expectation was that you would sit with tea, have a whinge to everyone else and just relax. It was a very popular group.

If you can work out a way to make it run smoothly I think you'll find it works well OP.

@inthekitchensink

Invitation to play - the montessori way Parents/carers required to stay but involvement not expected as we encourage independent play Activities selected for the theme of the week (space/rainforest/under the sea/evolution etc) with a variety of trays for practical life skills, sensorial, literacy & numeracy. Supervised play session with cake & hot drinks provided for adults. £3 per session Is this a better idea?

I’d be there like a shot

Thanks you lovely lovely lot

Invitation to play - the montessori way
Parents/carers required to stay but involvement not expected as we encourage independent play
Activities selected for the theme of the week (space/rainforest/under the sea/evolution etc) with a variety of trays for practical life skills, sensorial, literacy & numeracy.
Supervised play session with cake & hot drinks provided for adults.
£3 per session
Is this a better idea?

Where do I sign up?
But don't undercharge I'd pay £5 especially if tea and cake is provided.

Well if I can find out locally whether people would be interested I can get a better idea of the price. Thanks so much

I think your ideas have lots of merit, you might be able to get some funding - there's a lot of grant-funding around just now (as we gradually emerge from the pandemic) for projects based on bringing communities back together, helping children who've missed out on things and supporting well-being.

If you are not eligible for funding as an individual, you might get it in partnership with existing groups (as a PP suggested) or your local Community Development Trust or other eligible, community group.

To be honest I think it would work better if you had premises and operated almost like a childminder where parents booked you for slots of time, dropped the kids off and cleared off tondo their admin etc in a quiet space away from their kids - that would be more beneficial it would be hard to concentrate in a noisy room. Then depending on how many you'd work out ratios and stuff

I used to help run a church hall playgroup it was a nightmare especially cleaning afterwards - loads of the parents just cleared off and left the regular people to it.

But in theory it's a lovely idea

The thing is, the model seems to rely on you only having 5 or 6 children, so I can't see how you are going to be able to afford to pay for room hire, even before your tea / coffee / milk and cake, or your paint / glue / consumable craft materials (even if you were able to get a start up grant for the toys or borrow from another group that used the hall on different days.
I know you said you weren't looking to make a profit, but you presumably would need to be able to break even.

I'm not sure that's going to be able to break even.

Our local community centre, you'd be paying around £30 for long enough to set up, have enough time with the children and clear up.

You've then got drinks, cake, toys and craft items to buy. Bear in mind as well that unless you have your own premises, then you may well be bringing all the toys etc in every week or paying storage.

But in one room, I think it's highly likely that however amazing you are at prising off limpet children, you will spend most of the time doing that. One goes over to mummy, you persuade them over, by which point you'll find two others have decided to go to mummy, one other has fallen off the slide and mummy is giving you evils as you failed to prevent it, and the last child has decided that free play involves emptying the paint down the slide.

If they can see their parent then a fair number will be needing to be persuading off regularly. My dc used to do a ballet class and the children, who went happily in every week, then used to spend most of watch week either sitting on the floor calling "mummy look at me" or huddled in their lap. The teacher was very good at persuading them in by her voice, but they'd often return to mummy within 5 minutes. These were 3-4yos so not tinies.

True. Good points. Maybe I should volunteer at a playgroup or centre. Still pondering. Grants are a good idea to explore though I imagine I’d have to be somewhat established first.