Playgroups and nurseries

[kiwidream]

Hi all,

I will be travelling to NZ in the near future - preferred locations are Auckland or Wellington. I have a 10 month old daughter and I was wondering how easy it is to find regular playgroups for her (and my OH ) I was also interested to find out whether there are long waiting lists for the nurseries and what sort of age they start in NZ? Have singled out Titirangi in Auckland and Whitby in NZ as possible locations (dependant on jobs of course).

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[lindreth]

hiya -
Coffee groups are really popular here with mums and babies. From what I know, it seems they usually form from the ante-natal class - the Parents Centre one is really popular and fills up quickly, and the word is that most people join specifically so that they can have a coffee group later. I realise this won't help you very much since your baby is already born! But in my coffee group, we had a couple add-ons so maybe you could find one to join. We meet at each others' houses or at cafes - we chat, the babies play.

Besides the coffee groups, in our area there are play groups sponsored by churches and the library, I think they do singing and stuff like that. These seem to be quite popular. Plunket also has get-togethers called Pepe or something - we haven't gone to those. Parents Centre do age-specific classes that you can also take your baby to for more time with other mums and babies.

We are in christchurch and can't really say for sure that the same is true in Wellington or Auckland, but my sister-in-law is in Auckland and her coffee group experience has been the same as mine.

As for nurseries, our 11-month old goes to ABC, which is a nationwide chain. They take babies from 6 weeks old. When I was looking around for nurseries, most seemed to take children from 3 months onward. One place I called said they would not take a child under 6 months old and kind of talked down to me for considering putting such a small child in day care (not appreciated! but we ended up keeping him at home until 10-months old anyway as our circumstances changed). In our nursery, the smallest is probably 3 or 4 months old. New Zealand has a fairly generous parental leave law (compared to the USA, where I came from, at least) and my impression is that more mums stay home longer with their kids here, but there are plenty of kids in the nursery too. As for waiting lists, I think it's hit or miss. Some places had short waiting lists when I inquired. Friends with older kids told me horror stories about waiting lists and told me to get on a list before our son was even born. But in our case, we had no problem at all - ABC had a place for our son when we were ready to enroll him. This probably varies around the country.

Hope some of that is helpful! lindsay

[JandM]

The library in Titirangi has good events for mothers with small children - story time, singing time, etc. - and the staff there are lovely. When the children are a bit older, they run activities to encourage reading and writing, and programmes in school holidays. There are various groups and kindies in the area (big plus to Woodlands Park kindy, where my granddaughter was VERY happy), and you'll just have to see what the waiting lists are like when you get there.