Dolphins are mammals just like you. They have lungs and they breathe air, even though they live in the water! They also have their own language. Can you speak Dolphinese?

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Pose Instructions

1. Begin on all fours. Lower your elbows to the floor. Make sure that your knees are under your hips.
2. Clasp your elbows with the opposite fingers to keep proper spacing. Shoulders remain aligned over the elbows.
3. Move your lower arms forward, interlace your fingers, and make a triangle. Your hands are one point, and your elbows are the other two points. Breathe as your spine lengthens, your tailbone lifts up, your legs stretch.
4. Press your heels towards the floor.
5. Move your body forward so your chin touches down in front of your fingers.
6. Breathe out and lift out of the water.

 

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Body Benefits

This pose builds agility and flexibility in the joints of the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles as well as strengthens the muscles of the arms, legs and belly. Do the dolphin and build your upper body strength.

Math Medley

As you already know, dolphins are mammals just like us and have lungs like we do. Although they need to surface for a gulp of air about every five minutes or so. Do the math: If they were to swim for one hour, how many times would they come up for air? For 5 hours? For a whole day? Month?

Musical Musings

Dolphins squeeze air back and forth between breath sacs under their blowholes. Can you make clicking sounds and patterns like a dolphin singing his watery melodies?

Nutrition Tip

Did you know there are vegetables in the sea? Guess what they’re called? Yup, you guessed it — SEA VEGETABLES! They contain many vitamins and minerals. They have more nutrients than any other food on the planet!  These funny sea vegetables are very different then most of the foods we are used to. Sea vegetables balance our blood and can help us to calm down when are bodies are over-active and excited.

These sea vegetables have fun and exotic names like:

• Kombu
• Wakame
• Kelp
• Agar Agar
• Hijiki

Can you say those? Now you’re speaking some Japanese.

Here are some ways to get cooking with the sea:

• Add wakame to spaghetti sauce.
• Use kelp or dolce instead of salt.
• Bake with agar agar (instead of gelatin) as a base for custards, puddings and jello. It will thicken sauces too. (It’s also a vegetarian substitute for gelatin.)
• Cook kombu with rice and beans to up the minerals in your body.

Experiment, look for recipes and talk about this new and interesting addition to menu!

 

Ground yourself. Feel the earth at your feet. Spread your energy all the way through your finger branches and to the sky just like trees do.

Pose Instructions

1. Begin in Mountain. Imagine roots growing out of your feet, connecting to the earth.
2. Bend one leg and place the sole of that foot on the inside of the standing leg, anywhere between your ankle and thigh.
3. Bend your right knee and press your foot against the inside of your left leg. As your balance grows stronger, you will be able to raise your foot higher on your leg.
4. Bring your hands to your chest, palms together in Namaste position, raise your arms and stretch them out wide like the limbs of a tree. Separate your fingers and stretch those little finger branches. Balance.
5. Hold for as long as you can and then slowly lower your foot to the floor and change sides.

Note to Parents and Teachers

This pose fosters balance, concentration and focus when practiced regularly. Make a family or class forest in the morning or at the end of day to keep you all connected. Make your group Tree pose a sharing circle.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Reading Comes Alive with Yoga
Celebrate the strength and unity of trees with books like The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein or The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry. Go to the library with your children and find other “Tree’ titles, and develop the lifelong library habit early on.

Visual Vignettes
Draw a family tree and teach your children about their ancestors.

Ecological Echoes
Take your children on nature walks. Read under a tree about trees when the weather permits. Hug trees. Talk to trees. Balance upon their sturdy trunks and honor them with your beautiful self and the tree pose too.

Body Benefits
This pose develops strength and balance in the legs and torso. The reaching and stretching of the arms and fingers improves fine motor coordination too. Trees live on light and water and so do we. Imagine drinking water through the roots of your feet just like a tree. Water hydrates trees and our bodies too.

Nutrition Notes
Drink lots of WATER, clean water – either bottled or filtered. Most tap water contains chlorine, fluoride and sometimes even lead. The body is 75% water and needs to constantly be replenished. Dehydration can be the cause of a variety of symptoms including low energy, sugar cravings, dry and rough skin, fatigue, lack of focus and headaches. Water helps children stay alert and focused in the classroom and at home.

How much should you drink? That depends on you. We recommend keeping a bottle of water with you and your children throughout the day. Experiment and pay attention to how your body feels. Try starting your day with hot water and lemon and drinking a glass water before every meal and snack. Children can decorate their water and enhance the flavor with healthy lemon, orange, cucumber slices or even a jelly bean or other treat. Whatever helps them drink more H2O. Enjoy!

A snake’s tongue is a radar detector. It can taste and smell, seek out friends and detect enemies too. Stick out your tongue. Follow your senses. What do you sense in the air?

Instructions

1. Lie on your belly. Gently squeeze your legs together. Make your body long and strong like a snake.
2. Place your hands under your shoulders.
3. Inhale. Pull your shoulders down away from your ears. Lift your chest… higher and higher. Slither out of your skin and lower back.
4. Exhale as you hiss the s sound of the snake. Sssssss. Stick out your tongue. Flick it too.
5. Rest.
6. Inhale. Snake up again.
7. Do the snake as many times as you want too.

 

Activities for Home and School

We All Win

Make it a partner pose by doing the Snake Charmer pose together! The snake charmer squats in front of her snake. She plays her flute. She charms her snake to move up and down, side to side, high, low and any ways she wants the snake to go. The snake pays close attention to her charmer. She listens carefully with her tongue and follows directions with her eyes and body.

The charmer guides her snake back onto her belly. She pets and thanks her for a great job. Curls her into a ball. Puts her back into the basket. They travel to their next show. There they trade places.

Ecological Ethics

The mysterious and exotic ways of snake charmers throughout Asia have fascinated imaginations for centuries. To work with a cobra, they remove their poison glands so their bites become harmless. Is it OK to rob the cobra of its venom which is necessary for survival in order to put him in charm school? What do you think?

Mommy and Me

With infants and toddlers, let them lie on your back to have some herpetologic fun. (Herpetology is the study of snakes and other reptiles).They’ll giggle and enjoy the snake ride as you lift your spine up and down, side to side with them lying on your spine. Slither across the floor with them holding onto your shoulders then coil around them and cuddle to finish your serpentine sojourn.

Body Benefits

S is for snake is one of the children’s favorites, especially the boys. Practicing this pose will keep the spine and lower back flexible. Doing it the YogaKids way also exercises the tongue and opens the throat. When your snake is charmed, he is learning to follow non-verbal directions and enhance eye/brain/body coordination. Now that’s a sssspecial ssskill.

Ecological Echoes

Snakes have poor hearing. They don’t have outer ears like we do, but their inner ear is well tuned. Their slithering movements on the earth help them ‘hear’ through the ground. They are sensitive to vibrations that most people are completely unaware of.

Laughing Language

Make up s is for snake tongue twisters. Use an s location in each one, anything from Saturn to supermarkets to Singapore. How many s places can you name? Here’s a few to get your ssss’s started:  Super snails shovel slowly seeking Spain.

The concept of the roller coaster was born as ice slides built in the 17th century in Russia. Sleds were rolled down 70 foot drops of wood covered with a thick layer of ice. 100 years later the French added wheels and eventually tracks. For our YogaKids version, all you need is fearlessness and a friend or two. No tickets to buy. Let’s roll!

Instructions

1. Sit down with legs spread wide. Put your hands around each other’s waist. Hold tight. As the roller coaster climbs up the hill, lean back.
2. Lean forward as you speed downward.
3. Be brave and raise your hands as you lean right and left.
4. When you’ve had enough, unbuckle and collapse back. Rest.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

We All Win/Bridge of Diamonds

Take turns leading the roller coaster. Follow the leader. Move together as one. Enjoy the ride.

Open your heart and get a boost of energy in this pose round.

Pose Instructions

1. Lie on your back.
2. Bend your knees and place your feet flat on the floor, heels in close to your backside.
3. Bend your elbows and lower your arms over your head.
4. Place your palms flat on the floor beside your ears with the fingertips pointing toward your shoulders.
5. Pull your elbows toward each other.
6. Press down into your hands and feet, as you straighten your arms and legs, and lift your chest and thighs toward the sky.
7. Release down.
8. Finish up by curling into a ball and letting your body rock and roll back and forth.

 

Note to Parents and Teachers

This is a challenging pose. Please supervise and assist your child to come into this position easily and without force. Most young children will be unable to arch their spines like a wheel. Their pose will look more like a table..their chest level and their 4 limbs supporting their torso like the legs of a table.

 

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Affirmations

Make up some positive statements that will help you in this pose as well as make you feel good. Some examples of YogaKids affirmations are:

• I am flexible.
• My heart is open.
• My spine is strong.
• My brain is alert.

 

Body Benefits

This pose brings strength and flexibility to the spine, back, legs and arms. The more you practice, the more this pose will begin to look “wheel-like.”

 

Brain Balance

Whenever the head is lower than the heart, blood flow to the brain is increased. When done properly, wheel can oxygenate and wake up the brain.

 

Visual Vignettes/Laughing Language

Talk to your children about all the different ways that wheels make a difference in our lives. Imagine if we didn’t have cars, skateboards, skates, scooters, bicycles? Can you think of new ways to get around? Write and draw your innovative inventions.

 

Nutrition Tips

Most children love wagon wheels. Use whole wheat, rice or semolina pasta as a healthier alternative to refined white flour. Top it with a hearty tomato sauce filled with vegetables.

Do the wheel pose regularly to boost energy, awaken the brain and make yourself feel alert! What foods make you feel good? Which ones don’t you like very much? How do certain foods make you feel? Try this fun Food Mood activity.

Take three paper plates and have your children draw different faces:

• Make a happy face.
• Make a sad face.
• Make an angry face.

Attached their decorated plates onto the wall or the refrigerator. When your child likes a food, have him draw or write it on the happy plate. If what you are serving isn’t a favorite choice, she will choose the “sad” plate. Foods that contain a lot of sugar, artificial ingredients or too much salt can have an adverse effect on your child’s moods and feelings. Have him “post” these on the angry face plate.

This is our version of the classic pose, or asana, called Trikonasana. Tri- means three. Kona- means angle. Asana means pose. Three angles form a triangle. Can you find the triangles in this pose?

Instructions

1. Begin in Mountain pose.
2. Jump your feet and arms apart.
3. Turn your right foot so it points to the right.
4. Turn your left toes as far to the right as you can. Imagine a line from the back of your right heel straight into the middle of your left arch. Line up your feet on this imaginary line, to provide an even base for your triangle pose.
5. Press down evenly through both feet and feel strength in your legs.
6. Place your left hand on your hip as the teapot handle.
7. Bend your right arm to form the spout.
8. Release your left hand from the hip and slide it down your leg.
9. Stretch your right arm straight out to the side, as you extend and lengthen the right ribcage and the hips move left.
10. From the hip hinge, tilt the upper body sideways right, as the hips swivel more to the left. Stretch your ribcage and spine away from the opposite moving hips.
11. Release your right hand down. Lift your left arm up.
12. If you feel yourself pitched too far forward, lift your right hand higher on the leg and rotate your chest skyward.
13. If it’s comfortable, turn your head and look up. If not, look forward or down.
14. To return to center, just wiggle your fingers and return to an upright position with your arms still extended out to the sides. Turn your feet so your toes point straight forward and jump back to center.
15. Breathe in and out. Jump again to practice triangle and pour tea on the opposite side.

 

Note for Parents and Teachers

This pose increases strength and flexibility of the feet, legs, hips and neck. It helps lengthen the spine, too.

With young children, ignore the detailed directions of the feet. For children approximately 10 and older, or if they have been practicing for a while, we can begin to give them more details on structure and alignment. When they start asking questions, you will know that they are interested enough to begin to grasp the subtleties of shape and form in their poses.

 

Activity Ideas for Home and Classroom

Musical Musings

Sing the teapot song as you do the pose, with these variations:

Om a little teapot short and stout.
Here is my handle.
Here is my spout.
When I get all steamed up, I reach out…
Then tip me over and pour me up…

 

Bridge of Diamonds

Instead of beginning this classic teapot rhyme with I’m, in YogaKids we start with OM. The yogis say Om is the sound of the universe. Uni means one and verse means song. When we join together, we make beautiful music!

 

Math Medley

There are three different types of triangles. They are:

• Equilateral (all sides are equal)
• Isosceles (two sides are equal)
• Scalene (All sides are unequal)

See how many different triangles you can make with your legs and arms!

Do you know what animals got to fly in the first hot air balloon over 200 years ago? It was a sheep, a duck and a chicken, and they flew over France for eight minutes. How long can you fly? Where would you go?

Instructions

1. Sit on your heels and inflate your balloon. Take little sips of breaths, like bunny breathing, and pump your arms upward little by little. When you’ve sipped in as much air as you can, your balloon is filled.
2. Bring your hands over your head to show the balloon rising slowly upward.
3. Get up and fly around.
4. To land your balloon, blow out through your mouth and empty your lungs. Make noises like air escaping and collapse on the ground like an empty balloon.
5. Fall into child’s pose as you collapse. Rest. When you’re ready, pump up your balloon again. Where will you fly this time?

 

Note for Parents and Teachers

For very young children, this pose is a great introduction to breathing. Our lungs fill like balloons when we breathe in (inhalation) and deflate or empty when we breathe out (exhalation). Inflate your balloons together. Time it so you fill at the same time. Fly around together in a hot-air balloon dance and then deflate in a gentle heap…snuggle, giggle and wiggle together. How many times can you go up, up and away and come back down?

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

We All Win/Awesome Anatomy

You will need 3 people to play ‘Balloon, Balloon’. Fill real balloons. Rub them to create friction to stick to your body. Take turns giving directions like: Pass the balloon with your armpits; wrists; quadriceps; sacrum; quadriceps. Say the name of the body part as you pass. Take turns being the caller. (For children’s anatomy diagram see pages 104-105 of YogaKids: Educating the Whole Child Through Yoga by Marsha Wenig

Laughing Language/Visual Vignettes

Fantasize with your child to make up a story about where you would go in your hot air balloon. Who would you take with you? What do you see? Write the story down or draw pictures.

ABCDEFGHIJK   —  L —   MNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

What letters are to the left of the L? What letters are to the right? L is for Love. L is for Light. L is for Left. Right?

Instructions

1. Sit down.
2. Extend your legs straight ahead. Press them into the floor. Flex your feet.
3. Drop your shoulders away from your ears.
4. Place one hand alongside of you. Use that arm to keep your spine long.
5. Stretch the other hand in front of you. Make a capital L with your pointer finger and thumb. You’ll know you’ve got the left hand right if those 2 fingers look like this an L.
6. Move your L-shaped body to the left. Waddle sideways on your sit bones. Steer with the L finger wheel.
7. Recite the letters of the alphabet backwards to the left of L, K , J …..to A.
8. Come back to center. Realign in L.
9. Move to the right, steering with your L finger wheel.
10. Alphabetize forward from M to Z.

 

Note to Parents and Teachers

Use this pose to help teach children left from right. Seeing the L shape of their hand in front of their eyes and feeling the L shape of their body, will help ingrain the letter L.

For young children, L is one of the letters that gets transposed. Usually around age 5, most can recognize if the L is backwards or not. If your children aren’t sure about left and right, use L is for Left techniques to help them learn.

 

Activity Ideas for Home and Classroom

Laughing Language

Make up, tell or write a story about a little ilzard named Left who was a leftie and a row boat named right, who could only row to the right.

Visual Vignettes

Draw all the things you can think of that begin with an L, for example: lollipops and ladders. How about those that begin with an R, for example: rabbit, radio and rooster?

Body Benefits

This pose will keep the hips and sacro-iliac joint flexible and fluid.

You may have already learned how to be a Brave Warrior. Have you been practicing and getting braver? Now you are a Bold Warrior as well as a Brave Warrior. Congratulations! Keep building your strength and courage.

Instructions

1. 1. Jump your feet apart.
   2. Stretch your arms straight out of the shoulders, palms down and fingers stretched.
   3. Turn your toes toward the right.
   4. Bend your right knee into a right angle.
   5. Turn your torso forward.
   6. Raise your arms alongside your ears. Feel the support of the earth underneath you and stretch your hands to the sky.
   7. Say a few affirmations!
   8. Come up.
   9. Turn your feet to the left.
   10. Do the pose on the other side.

 

Affirmations

In this pose say the following:

1. • I am a bold warrior.
   • My body is strong.
   • My mind is strong.
   • My love keeps my family strong.

 

Note to Parents and Teachers

The word warrior comes from the root “war”. In yoga we practice peace, so I’d like you to encourage your children to think of the qualities a warrior has besides someone who fights. Discuss with your children the characteristics that peaceful warriors possess. Some ideas are strength, tenacity, perserverence, focus, concentration, believing in yourself. Is there something that your child would like to have or achieve at the moment? It could be anything from a toy, to getting better at a sport, realizing a goal, or whatever they come up with. Explain to them about the posture, presence, mind and other characteristics of a warrior.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Math Medley

Notice the shapes that your lower body makes in the warrior poses. Which of these angles does your knee make in your Brave and Bold Warriors?

• Is it a right angle at 90 degrees?
• An obtuse angle at more than 90 degrees?
• Or an acute angle that is smaller than 90 degrees?
• Can you see and feel them as you practice?

Visual Vignettes

Draw yourself, your friends and family as warriors. Color them. Decorate them too. Put your warriors on a hangar with a string and make a mobile.