Through all this wonder, it helps disadvantaged kids to develop their communication skills and imagination, “creating minds fit for learning”, as Anne Tanner, head teacher of Whitley Park Infants School, said.
In adult terms, it’s a portable sensory space (a room within a room) full of equipment like a giant bubble tube, fibre optic strands, a star curtain, a mirror ball, a sound system and coloured lights. Using the very cunning computer programmes that control it, a little imagination and some simple resources, children’s workers can turn it into dozens of different worlds for the children to play in and learn; it can be a circus, a jungle, an undersea world or even outer-space, dinosaurs can walk through it or lions roar.
What makes it truly unique is that it’s portable. It can be dismantled, moved and re-erected in a day.
Most sensory play is restricted to hospices and special schools with dedicated sensory rooms, which aren’t available to the majority of kids who need them.
Phyzzikids breaks down this barrier and provides the opportunity for children to experience sensory play in any school or nursery in the UK. Each one can be shared by several children’s centres which would be unable to give up space to or afford a permanent facility. This means sensory play becomes available to thousands more disadvantaged children.
It attracts hard to reach families into projects that can help them, and builds partnerships between projects and workers.
And the kids love it!