Tips on starting a language playgroup for toddlers

[SqueezyDiva]

I am the english parent of half-Norwegian children aged 5 and 2.

As they get older they are losing the Norwegian they have learnt because of school, father fed-up of stilted norsk conversations, etc.

I want to start a weekend playgroup in West London. I know about 3 other half norwegian preschoolers in the area.

Any sensible tips or crazy ideas for getting started and running a successful group????

Many thanks in advance

SD

lol
Even as I worte it I thought 'Hmm,we have discussed this already..'
Getting old y'see

Hey,less of your cheek!

Kiff,that is interesting..
May i ask what made you decide to do this?
I resume you are not a Russian?
How good is your Russian?
There are loads of Russians in London,I would imagine it would be very popular.
Give it a whirl!

Ah!
In that case,it would be a terrible shame to lose it.

We lived in Russia.
Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.

I loved it.

My dh does lots of development work all over the world.
My parents have also lived abroad for over 40 years so it wasn't a huge shock.

I preferred Nizhny to Moscow which seems to be getting just like any other capital city.

Very happy memories.

ha ha - me to know you to find out!

Bwa ha ha

??

No,I know what you mean Cal,just wondered myself why they had gone.
One of my least contentious threads I felt...

sigh

the idea was to be discreet, right?

Moondog, you enthused me that i should go for it - now i want to think about putting out feelers on mnet for anyone interested. I'd really rather do it anonymously. Wouldn't want my new friends searching through all my random threads.

So I asked for tech to take off my posts - and waiting for this thread to die down.

{kidding}

Oh rightyo!
I used to feel the same then rapidly came to conclusion that even if people knew who I was (and how many Weslh speaking salts do you think there are who have lived in Russia??) they wouldn't care less anyway.

My dh thinks I'm a bit green when it comes to the internet.

It's always like... 'so there was a button, and you clicked it, and you installed this software and now the computer runs half as slow.. ooookaaaay '

I think soliciting strangers on the internet to meet my child, and equiping them with a shedload of personal information, would come up high on his '????' radar.

Cal,am quite pleasant and calm in RL.
Kiff,fair point but one just as likely to come across loons in RL I find.

sorry, haven't got time to read whole thread. We set up a biingual playgroup in Spain more or less along the lines of the one califrau talks about. However we were a very small group, maybe 5 or 6 families and because there was nowhere like a churchhall or community centre to hold the sessions we had to rotate around our houses. After a few months it sizzled out because:

1. there werent enough people, if two or 3 kids were off there werent enough for that session
2. it couldnt grow anyway because noone had enough space in their house.

So i would say your most important issues are: where you hold the meetings and getting a good core group of at least 10 commited families
good luck

Thanks for the great tips y'all. Most useful. Things are progressing slowly but surely.