Glow Tots Sensory is a hidden gem of a playgroup offering something completely unique! A child-led immersive multi-sensory session, that allows for a one-to-one interaction and bonding with your child. Children are encouraged to flow between the different Montessori sensorial style toy stations that are dotted around the room. There were around 12 different stations, each with a different theme and educational sensory equipment.
The room is kept dark so that the sensory lights can be fully experienced. The first station George (my 2.5 year old son) goes to is the cars; he is car obsessed at the moment! There is a matt with a road on it and different sensory light blocks. Also on the matt are different stacking shapes. These were brilliant for practicing balancing and hand eye coordination. A bit like a grimms rainbow.
Then we moved to the middle matt where there were all sorts of different colour objects to play with, ‘popper’ toys, ‘push-pull’ toys, and teething toys. This was a big hit for the younger babies in the group.
Another favourite was the ‘silver matt’ – a silver crunchy matt a bit like tin foil; made the best sound when crawling over it! This matt also had Marvellous Metallic construction blocks, some of which were magnetic. These different shaped blocks were great for building, linking, stacking and rolling.
My son really enjoyed the play dough stand. This included interesting shapes to make different impressions with and scissors to cut the play dough. My son has just started taking an interest in scissors and cutting; the scissors that Sarah provided were plastic and really toddler safe. I have been looking for a pair like these for a while so I will find out where she got them!
There was a dinosaur theme tuff tray, with different coloured rice to pour and make marks in. There was another matt for puzzles. This included sensory bin shape sorters, as well as jigsaw puzzles. Also on this matt was a mystery type box, where children had to put their hands in through the holes to feel the shapes inside.
Another big hit with my son was a plastic tube attached to a hoop at one end to make it higher to send balls down. This kept George entertained for ages! He loved trying different shaped/textured balls and sending them rolling through the tube and across the room, seeing how far they would go.
A toy I had not seen before were magnetic building sticks called ‘Smart Max’, which also had animal attachments. George really enjoyed taking these sticks apart and using the magnetic balls making different shapes. He especially enjoyed mixing and matching the animals so they had different front legs to back legs, for example half a giraffe and half a hippo, and then putting more magnetic sticks between to make their bodies stretched. These building sticks were hidden amongst metallic streamers; George really enjoyed hiding the cars in this too!
At the end of the session everyone sat in a circle and Sarah led the group with some nursery rhymes and bubbles. Then Sarah got the parachute out, which George loved to run under! And we sang some different nursery rhymes shaking the parachute. We then had a goodbye song. The group is very social, as it’s child led you can chat to other parents while your child chooses to go around the room.
This session was just brilliant; we haven’t found anything like this in West Berkshire yet. Sarah does three different groups for different ages, ‘Mini Glow’ -3months – first steps, ‘Little Glow’ – Confident Walkers to Preschool aged, and a mixed age group 0-4yrs. Sarah offers pay as you go sessions at 60 minute each. The session we went to was at Thatcham Catholic Hall, where there is a free car park right outside. After the class George and I took a walk into Thatcham to visit Costa for a sweet treat.
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