Without planning it, Fran Hiebert and Denise Turanli got pregnant at the exactly same time. They’d met working at Coca-Cola, had their baby boys one day apart and got to share the fascination of watching them develop and grow together.
“I was living in the UK at the time, and Denise came over to visit and I took her to every baby class you can imagine,” said Hiebert. “Although there were lots of aspects of programs over there that we liked, we felt that there were lots missing as well…there was a clear gap in the Canadian market to be serving new parents better.”
Hiebert explained that one of the things her and Turanli noticed was that the experience for parents needed to be improved.
“It’s such a huge transition being a new parent, especially when you’re doing it for the first time, that we really wanted to create a space where we could bring people together and have the grown-ups have just as much fun as the babies.”
Both from business backgrounds, the two Winnipeg moms launched Lullaland in 2019, a baby sensory class designed to encourage cognitive development using light, colours, sounds, songs and textures. Hiebert said she was more behind-the-scences and at first Turanli ran the programs. They wrote original music and created 45 themes with different props, costumes, puppets and experiences. Nothing grates on an exhausted parent’s ears quite like bad singing, so they decided to only hire qualified leaders with performing arts backgrounds.
“What we say is you can do your whole mat leave with us, and you will never experience the same class twice,” said Hiebert. “We mix it up, we make it interesting and engaging for the parents. But we also do have a consistent beginning and ending because it is important for babies to have some sort of repetition too.”
Lullaland is not a baby playgroup where you sing the same old nursery rhymes repeatedly.” Turanli added, “Our sensory classes are backed by research, designed with creativity, and crafted to encourage the rapid development of your little one in their formative years. From promoting eye tracking to nailing their pincer grip, and much more, our classes encourage these essential skills through wonder and play.”
There are three different programs: Lullanewborns (from six weeks to sitting unsupported), Lullababies (sitting and taking first steps) and Lullatots (up to 3.5 years old). The timing is of sensory classes is critical.
You may think that allowing babies to experience a collage of colours, sounds and textures simply keeps them entertained. In fact, it is far more beneficial for their growing minds. According to the Center on the Developing Child with Harvard University, the early years are the most active period in the brain for establishing neural connections, in fact, in the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections form every second. This is why sensory stimulation from birth is vital.
That’s one of the reasons why Anitra Longley and her 15-month-old son Jason are attending Lullaland classes at Seven Oaks.
“I’ve done church programs, drop-in programs and quite a few mommy-and-me classes. It’s fun, but it’s usually just free play, which is kind of cool, but it’s not what we’re looking for when we’re going out at this age,” said Longley. “I want Jason to be engaged, and that’s what they do at Lullaland.”
Longley explains she doesn’t mind driving from Selkirk because “there are no other programs that offer games and themes the way they do.”
“The thing that’s different with Lullaland is it’s such a positive atmosphere. It just feels like everyone wants to be there and everyone communicates. It just fills our cup up when we go. It’s not draining like the other ones can be,” said Longley. “It really helped with my mental health because parents also interact with each other, right? I’ve actually made some friends.”
Longley and Turanli’s idea was a runaway success, and they steadily kept expanding. Now, they deliver 43 classes a week to over 600 families across nine locations — eight in Winnipeg, one in East St. Paul— and they’re planning to franchise Lullaland across Canada.
“There’s a Google review that says something like, ‘It’s harder to get into Lullaland than it is to get Taylor Swift tickets!’ Because we did get there at one point. We want to be able to grow in a way that doesn’t compromise the quality of the program,” said Hiebert. “I think right from the beginning, although it started as a passion project, we very much knew that franchising was the route that we wanted to go with it.”
Currently the classes cater to 1,000 participants each week with babies as young as three weeks and grandparents as old as 92. Everyone, regardless of their age, loves the class because there is so much variation. Their themes take babies into space, through the rainforest and even under the sea.
Longley joked that she has two dogs and she thought Jason was starting to act like them at one point. After she started taking Jason to Lullaland, she noticed that interacting with other kids consistently helped his personality come through more.
“Before I started taking him he was very reserved. And now he’s so much more outgoing. He’ll go sit in the middle of the room and dance…It’s so funny,” said Longley. “I’ll definitely be going until he reaches the age cap.”
For more information about Lullaland visit lullalandsensory.ca.
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