The "Naked-Baby" Class

If we ever have another baby, I would definitely do PEKIP again. I wish I'd known about it when Josh was little, but I only learned about it when we had Zoë.

We started doing PEKIP when Zoë was five months old and we continued until she "graduated" at 12 months. For me, it was one of the more worthwhile mommy-baby classes around.

PEKIP, run by Anne Knecht-Boyer, is an educational child development program that teaches quality games and activities that parents can play with their babies. It is all about sensory integration and stimulating activities that help with motor skills development (fine and gross).

We went to class each time bringing along with us two huge towels --one to use, the other a spare. Yes, I'd been peed on a couple of times, but thankfully no poo. You don't have to worry about the baby catching a cold. The room temperature is set to around 260C.

What I loved about PEKIP are the many activities that one can play with baby and the different baby-safe props that Anne uses. Some of the activities were so slap-the-forehead simple yet so very interesting and quite easy enough to replicate at home. There were also others that I never dreamed that I could do with a baby and never would have dared try with Zoë if I hadn't first learned how to properly do them during the class.

I liked the fact that all the babies in Zoë's class were born in the same month and it was almost like having a weekly playgroup where the mommies could mingle and compare notes.

I also liked the fact that the activities got increasingly more challenging as the babies grew. We started out with simple exercises or activities that we would do with the babies simply lying on the towels --this was before the babies could sit up or crawl. As we progressed, the babies got to belly-crawl on a mirror slathered with baby lotion, etc. Around 10 months or so, they got to go around an "obstacle course" where they had to go up an incline, come down a mini-slide, crawl over/through/under objects. It was amazing to see their mobility improve with each passing week.

Each session would end with a mini massage session. Anne provided all the natural oils and she would walk us through the strokes. It was a nice way to calm the babies down at the end of each session.

To learn more about PEKIP, click here.