You’re Invited.
Dear homeschoolers and future-homeschoolers,
Are you in search of community for your young children?
We invite you to join us for a weekly play group! The group is currently open to ages 1-5 and will grow along with the kids in the group, meaning your 5 year old won’t ’age-out’ next year; the group’s age range will grow to include them.
Membership is free with optional costs for one-off field trips, etc.
Our goals:
to create consistent community for our children
to foster mixed-age socialization
to allow our children to engage authentically with nature, each other, and the wider world
to have friends to go on field trips with
to create community and support for homeschool parents
Play group will meet weekly — Tuesdays from 9-11am — at a rotating local park. Each meetup will have elements of both structured and unstructured time. We’ll begin and end with a brief circle and we may offer an activity, but the bulk of our time together will be for unstructured outdoor play.
Expectations of parents:
Parents will remain at the park for the entirety of each meetup and are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of their children. That being said, we encourage parents not to hover. Use this meetup as a time to practice trusting children.
We generally avoid:
forced sharing
rescuing children from boredom
policing manners
required participation in activities
jumping in to resolve conflicts for kids before giving them space to try it themselves
We know this is outside the mainstream. If these things are new for you, please know this is a safe community in which to practice. There is no expectation of perfection or that one family parents the same as the next.
Our hope is for all members to feel a sense of belonging here. This group is secular, which for our purposes simply means non-religious. No part of our time together will be religiously based and we welcome families of all faiths and backgrounds.
One of our guiding considerations is “would our children have encountered this 50 years ago?” Therefore our playgroup is currently a screen-free environment focused on timeless childhood experiences.
In addition to our weekly meetup we host occasional indoor gatherings for things like baking together, sharing poetry, holiday celebrations, museum visits, and more.
Interested in joining us? Click below to sign up!
