What is a meeting like?

If you've never been to a MOPS meeting I wanted to share with you what you could expect at your first meeting.  (For an estimated time table you can see our Meeting Schedules page.)

When you get to Central Bearden Church (6300 Deane Hill Drive in Knoxville) feel free to park in the visitor lot and come through the double glass doors.  If you are dropping off your MOPPETS, turn right as you walk through the entryway.  Continue walking down the hall until you get to the childcare welcome desk.  There someone will tell you which rooms your children will be in while you enjoy the meeting.

After your kids are settled, head up stairs to the third floor where we meet for both our morning and evening meetings.  Dinner is provided for members who choose to sign up and for all first time visitors.   After we gather our food, eat, and fellowship for a while there are generally announcements.  Then we typically have a speaker who shares with us for about 45 minutes or so. We have speakers that range from police officers, legal experts, kindergarten teachers, doctors and just regular mommas sharing what they know.

After our speaker (or other activity) we break up into small groups.  This year we will have three small groups: Moms with children who have special needs, Working moms and Stay-at-home moms.  Our small groups are really where you get to know the other moms in the group.  Here we discuss life, the speaker, or whatever needs to be discussed.  Our small groups are also responsible for planning play dates and mom-night-outs.  We already have a couple of "whole group" mom-night-outs on the calendar, but it is nice to meet in smaller groups so you can really get to know other moms.

Each of our small groups also contains mentor moms.  These can be moms that have school aged children or moms who are now grandmothers.  They are here to impart their wisdom to us and to support us in our roles as mothers with little ones!  These mentors are such blessings to us, I can't imagine our group with out them.

During the meeting your little ones (if you brought them) have been busy with our loving childcare workers and will be ready to be picked up at 8pm or 11:30am depending on which meeting you are attending.

Well, I hope this has given you a good picture of what a MOPS meeting is like and I truly hope to see you this Thursday at 6pm!

This Wednesday's playdate

Hey ladies!  We had a great time a few weeks ago at West Hills Park.  You can see photos of our playdate on our Facebook page.

This Wednesday we are headed to Tataru's Gym off of Lovell at 9:30.  The cost is $5/hour per child.

We hope to see you then!

More food for thought...

The speaker at our last meeting was great and in addition to the things she mentioned in her talk on "Raising Children in a Futuristic World" I wanted to share this blog post about how we create a legacy our children will remember.

Advent Conspiracy

If you were at our last meeting you heard a little bit about Advent Conspiracy.  Here is a link to their site and a video that you can watch and then share with others:

What does my child do at Moppets?

If you have never brought your child to Moppets you might be wondering what goes on while you are having fun in your MOPS meeting. For the babies in our class they are simply loved on and cared for by some of the most caring childcare workers around. We usually try to play a "Hide Em in Your Heart" CD because of the wonderful melodies and great message.

In the older classes though, we try to have some scripture based lesson that we share with the children.  In the past months we have covered three topics:

• God made you
• God made everything
• God made your hands for helping and serving

When you pick up your child at Moppets we will have a report of what they did as well as suggestions on extending what they learned at home.  Here is what the report looked like for our last meeting:

This Moppets Report is for: ________________

Today at MOPPETS I learned:

God made me, and more specifically, God made my hands to serve and help others.

Bible Verse:

Luke 10:27b “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We read this story:

The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) from the “Little Kids Time” bible

Questions to ask your child:

• Who made you? (A: God)
  
• What else did God make? (God made all things!)
  
• Why did God make your hands? (To help and serve others)
  
• Who should you help? (Anyone that needs help)
  
• What did the “good Samaritan” do?
  

Family Fun:

Tonight we learned that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. We should always be helping those in need. In this season of Thanksgiving try cleaning out the house (or your child's room) and taking things to the less fortunate. Also, consider carrying food or food gift cards in your car to give to those who are less fortunate. Our children will learn much more from what we do than by what we say.

Special notes and comments about your child: 

We hope that your experience at Moppets is always a delight, but if you ever have questions or concerns please contact Bridgette Boudreaux or our co-leaders Hedy Collins or Christa Margene.  We do ask that if you plan on bringing your children to Moppets that you make reservations by clicking on the link at the top right hand side of this page.  Reservations close at 10am the Monday before the meeting and are emailed out to all registered MOPS moms a couple of weeks in advance.