Our group play sessions for deaf children run every week during term time and are extremely popular!
We offer sessions for different age groups
- Messy Munchkins – 0 to 4 years (venue – Belfast)
- Super Stars – nursery age (venue – Belfast)
- Play Pack – 4 to 8 years (venues – Belfast)
Additional locations may be added subject to funding
Messy Munchkins children attend with their parents and Super Stars and Play Pack children work towards attending sessions alone.
These fun-filled spaces where deaf children can enjoy lots of innovative play experiences. Our families are often pleasantly surprised to see the children using real everyday objects in their play, enjoying lots of multi-sensory experiences and accessing fantastic stimuli for imaginative play.
Through play, we actively encourage the children to take risks and become more resilient. Our children are also given opportunities to play out, practise and prepare for real life experiences in a hearing world. With support from our play staff, the children learn strategies to manage their feelings.
Our children tell us that they love playing with their deaf friends who are “just like me”. They are able to develop real and meaningful friendships in a group where there is no ‘otherness’. This helps the children to become more confident and independent which positively impacts on their sense of identity. For this reason, we operate a deaf-child only policy for our group play sessions.
Messy Munchkins, Super Stars and Play Pack are environments where every child’s communication skills can grow and flourish. We playfully weave language acquisition, understanding and comprehension into the sessions and at the end of every session the children engage in creative story time (or rhyme time for younger children) where we use props, puppets and other creative elements to transform books into language-rich visual experiences for the children.
Parents can get involved in all the fun too! We offer ‘Sign & Play’ alongside Messy Munchkins, Super Stars and Play Pack. Click here to find out more.
Sign & Play for Parents
CLICK HERE
