Wee Bookworms offers a variety of classes throughout the year for children, featuring engaging storytimes and fun arts and crafts activities. Kids can enjoy listening to their favourite tales and expressing their creativity through themed crafts, making each session a delightful and enriching experience. These classes provide a wonderful opportunity for children to explore their imaginations and develop a love for reading and art.
Wunderkind Sensory Baby Classes in Northern Ireland
Wunderkind by Wee Bookworms is a fantastic multisensory program designed for babies, toddlers and young children aged 0 months – 5 years, aimed at fostering baby's and children's holistic development through a combination of storytelling, music, movement, sensory explorations, and art. With the active involvement of one parent (or both parents), each session provides a nurturing environment for babies and young children to engage their senses & explore their surroundings.
Sensory Baby Class: Why is sensory exposure important?
The first years of a child's life are incredibly important in terms of brain development. What a baby feels, sees, hears and smells impacts what synaptic connections in the brain survive. Experiences with multisensory elements (touch, smell, sound and sight) can positively impact a baby's development. By the stimulation of multiple senses, signals are send to the brain which enhance the baby's emotional, cognitive and physical development.
Sensory experiences can have the following positive effects:
- reduction of infant stress
- increase of alertness
- improvement of sleep
Visual stimulation supports early communication and can help to form a foundation for social development. Speech, music and environmental sounds form the basis of emotional memories in babies and positively impact the auditory and language areas of the cortex that generate neurological connections.
85% of a baby's brain is developed by the age of three, which is why sensory experiences are vital! To summarise the above; multisensory stimulation can have a positive impact on children's cognitive, social and emotional development.
Advantages of Wunderkind Baby Sensory Classes
Wunderkind provides a variety of sensory-rich experiences that engage babies' senses of touch, sight, sound and smell. These can have a positive effect on their cognitive and sensory development.
Bonding Between Parent and Child: With one parent actively participating in each session, Wunderkind promotes bonding and attachment between parent and child. Through shared, fun experiences, parents and babies develop a strong emotional connection that forms the basis of a secure attachment.
Promotion of Motor Skills: Movement-based activities such as gentle yoga poses, baby massage, and sensory exploration encourage the development of gross and fine motor skills in infants. As they reach, grasp, and manipulate objects, infants strengthen their muscles and coordination, setting the stage for future physical milestones.
Cognitive Development: Storytelling and sensory activities stimulate babies' cognitive development by encouraging them to observe, explore, and make connections between objects and concepts.
The calming and soothing nature of music, movement, and sensory experiences can even help infants to learn to regulate their emotions and self-soothe.
Social Interaction: Wunderkind provides opportunities for babies to interact with other babies in a safe environment.
Wunderkind Sensory Studio offers classes across Northern Ireland.
The instructor
Hello, I'm Madeleine. Over the past 12 years, I've been deeply involved in teaching infants and children. From conducting sensory, art, and creative writing workshops in diverse settings, at Wee Bookworms and in schools to teaching German and English, my journey has been enriching. Through Wunderkind, I've developed my own comprehensive multisensory program for babies and toddlers, drawing from both recent research findings, my personal insights, and my Master's degree in Early Childhood Education from Trinity College, Dublin (Marino Institute).