What is a stay and play group?

A stay and play group - also known as a playgroup or parent and toddler group - is a community-based setting that offers a structured yet relaxed environment where parents can connect with one another and share experiences (often over a cup of tea!) while their children play. These groups aim to foster socialisation, encourage play-based learning and enhance parent-child bonding.

It's important to note that the term ‘playgroup’ can sometimes mean a setting where parents drop-off their children - usually for half a day - to be looked after by qualified childcare professionals. In this article we’ll use the term to mean a group whereby parents and carers remain with their children. On that note, always double-check when you see a 'playgroup' listing that it's a 'stay-and-play' situation, not a drop-off group!

The majority of playgroups are indoors and include activities like drawing/painting, indoor climbing frames, peg puzzles, soft toys, book corners and pretend food/kitchens. The activities will vary if the playgroup is for just babies as opposed to toddlers.

Most stay and playgroups will have a large range of toys available

So who organises playgroups?

In putting together The Play Map, we found about 70% of playgroups are run by churches for the wider community (almost always for those of all faiths and none), and the rest run by a mixture of children’s centres, libraries and community centres. Some playgroups are also started by parents themselves. This is especially true with playgroups in other languages. Our list of German speaking playgroups in London (or ‘Deutsche Spielgruppen’) has many that have been created by German speaking parents for their children to hear their native language outside of the home.

Because of the community run nature of playgroups, fees for attending are often quite low. In our research, this ranged from nothing at all to around £4. Sometimes the fee is voluntary for those on lower incomes. The structure of most stay and play groups include free play, snack time (often this is provided), tea/coffee for parents, a tidy up time towards the end followed by a song or story session. Most playgroups last for around one and a half hours and typically happen on term-time weekday mornings.

Stay and play groups can be extremely popular, especially in some London boroughs with lots of parents. For this reason some groups may have a waiting list or need to be pre-booked. Hence why we suggest checking the website of each playgroup listed on our directory before attending. From personal experience, I’ve also found that even if there is no requirement to pre-book, it’s worth turning up at the start time as some groups need to turn people away if they get too busy. Every room has a capacity limit after all, and the nicest playgroups tend to be those that don’t get too loud or crowded!

We hope this provided a short overview of what a stay and play group is. We’ve also compiled a list of the benefits of stay and play groups here, which you might like to read.