Playdate: If You Give a Pig a Pancake Playdate

I'm relatively active in a local "Mommy and Me" playgroup. It not only provides my son with an outlet that is semi-structured to test out his budding social skills, but it also provides me with some time to connect with other moms with similar aged little ones. The group is run through www.meetup.com and is very active. Membership requires attendance of at least two daytime events a month and paying yearly membership dues. Our group calendar is packed full of events and there are plenty of opportunities to get together between park playdates, festivals, and other scheduled in-home playdates.

Personally, I prefer in-home playdates to the more public events. I generally feel more relaxed and able to actually chat with the other moms while the kiddos play together. About once a month, I host a themed playdate in our home. Most recently, my theme was "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" based on the popular children's book by Laura Numeroff.

 

We did a read aloud of our book, If You Give a Pig a Pancake. I made mini pancakes on our griddle and everyone was invited to add toppings to their pancakes to suite their taste. I included bananas, strawberries, blueberries, syrup, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. It was a huge hit, but  I was so busy snacking and chatting that I completely forgot to take photos during the playdate. Oops! Here are a few I snapped before our guests arrived and the fun began.

 

Normally, during the warmer months, we set up our playdates outdoors on our patio. We have a great outdoor couch and it makes for a great space, but at the last minute, I decided to move our playdate inside due to the crazy humidity and heat. Instead, of using our downstairs playroom (which is generally perfect for playdates), I opted to keep the food upstairs and brought up a few baskets of toys into our family room to keep the playdate clean up at a minimum.

 

I also added some board books on the ottoman so that any kiddos who wanted to continue to read/ look at books would have the option to do so.

 

It didn't seem like I brought a lot of toys up for our playdate, but once all the bins were emptied, toys covered the floor. My little guy couldn't wait for everyone to arrive and started playing and digging through the bins shortly after this picture was taken.