A STORYTELLING club is helping Barrhead babies and toddlers to develop a lifelong love of reading.

The free Bookbug sessions encourage little ones to pick up a book from a young age to enhance their learning.

Group leaders spend time helping mums and dads to spark their child’s imagination through storytelling, reading, singing and dancing.

The club runs four half-hour sessions in Barrhead Foundry each week with the aim of teaching tots to appreciate the value of the written word from a young age.

Incorporating touch and feel books, board stories, cuddly toys and DVDs, the Bookbug classes bring reading to life in various ways.

Bookbug leader Morna Burns believes the true value of the gatherings lie in the fact they benefit both child and parent.

Explaining the background behind the initiative, she said: “It’s to encourage interaction between parents and children. It teaches everyone songs, it’s quite social as well – new mums get to meet other new mums.

“When you see them coming from babies and start to interact with the songs and with you it’s lovely. You can see they all know what they’re going to do.

“It has been proven that kids who have that interaction from a young age hugely benefit from it later on in life.”

Morna added: “It also introduces them to getting read to and it’s to encourage parents to get children reading from a young age.

“The Scottish Book Trust fund all the Bookbug sessions. They are responsible for our training as well.

“I’ve had a lot of feedback from the adults themselves. Sometimes young mums can feel cut off but this gives them somewhere to go.”

Bookbug sessions are held at Barrhead Foundry four times a week.

The first of which takes place every Wednesday for babies aged up to 18 months, while a class for toddlers who are between 18 months and four years old runs each Friday.

The venue then hosts an open session for pre-school children on Saturdays. Each of the aforementioned classes run from 10.30am until 11am.

Bookbug members also meet at the library on Sundays from 11.30am to 12pm.

For full details about the classes, which are held throughout East Renfrewshire, visit: www.ercultureandleisure.org/bookbug.