Toddlers encouraged to be messy at Glazer Children's Museum's sensory room

Glazer Children's Museum's sensory room

FOX 13's Barry Wong takes us inside the sensory studio at the Glazer Children's Museum, where kids making a mess is the whole idea.

TAMPA - For three weeks every Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon, a room at the Glazer Children's Museum is filled with laughs, wonder and potentially a big mess.

"It is being taken over by the sensory room, so we have sensory play in there and some friends bringing in amazing sensory activities," Glazer Children's Museum President & CEO Sarah Cole said.

The friends are from the Sensory Studio, which owner Sammie Yeates describes as "a place for kids to be kids." Each week, the room features a different theme.

What they're saying:

"There's so many opportunities for kids to do structured activities like story times and sit-down activities and crafts, but there's not a lot of opportunities for kids to take the lead and get to create and learn in their own ways," Yeates said.

During one session, themed "Stretch It, Squish It, Swirl It", toddlers stretched homemade slime and dumped toy animals into oobleck, which a mix of solid and liquid. They also had the chance to paint by using their hands or flicking paint from a brush and could create pieces using a spinning art technique.

"Anything that engages all the senses, touch, sound, all of those things, and building that sensory play is what builds that brain so that the kid can start to think about bigger concepts as they get older," Cole said. "It's so cool to watch those little brains. I mean, if we could power batteries off the brainpower that's going off in that room right now, it would be amazing."

The best part for parents is that they can leave the mess in the room.

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What's next:

The final session for the sensory room will be next Tuesday Aug. 26. The theme is "Oooey Gooey Sensory". For Toddler Takeover, the museum is hosting various other activities until Aug. 31.