Have you ever squeezed water out of a wet towel? In this pose, we twist our body to wring out tension and tightness. Our spinal nerves get nourished. Vertebrae muscles get stronger. The organs in our belly get exercised and revitalized. Get ready to twist and blow!

Instructions

1. Lay on your back.
2. Hug your knees into your chest. Clasp them gently.
3. Rock back and forth.
4. Return to center.
5. Stretch your arms out to the sides. Palms are up.
6. Inhale and drop your hips and bent knees to one side. Twist your ribs, neck and head to the other.
7. Blow out through your mouth.
8. Change sides.
9. Twist back and forth 5-10 times, then release onto one side and relax for at least a minute.
10. Blow out fully.
11. Breathe in deeply.
12. Close your eyes.
13. Do the other side.

Note for Parents and Teachers

You can help your child increase the twisting action. As she twists her lower body to the right and upper body left, help her in the following way:

1. Place one hand on her left lower back and the other hand on her right shoulder. Move her hips in one direction.
2. Lengthen her chest by pressing her shoulder gently down towards the floor in the other direction. Encourage the spiraling of the spine to stretch and relax her.
3. Give her a kiss on the cheek.
4. Move her knees to the other side.
5. Repeat.

Let your child help you to twist and blow too. Spinal twists massage the internal organs as well as the spine.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Math Medley/Awesome Anatomy

Your spine consists of 3 groups of bones that help you stand up tall: 7 in your cervical spine or neck, 12 in your thoracic spine or chest area and 5 in your lumbar spine or lower back area. How many bones are in your spine? 31 spinal nerves run through your spine and connect to every part of the body. How many vertebra bones and nerves are in your backbone?

Body Benefits

The twisting action of this pose massages the kidneys, liver, stomach and intestines. It makes your digestive and eliminative systems healthy and strong.

Volcanoes live inside of mountains. They are the earth’s way of releasing heat and pressure. Lava and magma burst through the crust and erupt. Use the volcano pose to let off steam in peaceful ways whenever you feel like bursting or exploding.

Children enjoy making their breath very audible in this pose, so it sounds like volcanic noise.

 

 

 

Instructions

1. Begin in mountain pose. Bring the fingertips together at the chest.
2. Jump the feet apart.
3. Place your hands in the Namaste position at your heart.
4. Inhale. Watch your hands as you raise them over your head.
5. Exhale as you explode your arms outward.
6. Return to Namaste.
7. Erupt and release again and again. Have fun making exploding volcano noises!

Activity Ideas for Home and Classroom

Behavior Management

This is an excellent pose for behavior management. Parents continuously report that children find the volcano pose very useful when they feel angry or frustrated. Encourage them to release feelings and emotions in this positive way. Practice together.

Ecological Echoes & Math Medley

1,511 volcanoes have erupted in the last 10,000 years, not including tens of thousands on the sea floor. These are still considered active. Can you calculate the average number of eruptions? (Hint: Divide 10,000 by 1,511.)

Laughing Language

Imagine all the things that could be inside of your volcano. Feelings, food, and toys are a few examples of what some YogaKids use. Here are some examples of what they’ve found inside their volcano:

• My volcano is filled with lollipops.
• My volcano is filled with lava.
• My volcano is filled with kitty cats.

Make up your own volcano statements:

“My volcano is filled with                                            .”

Does your body ever feel like it’s been tied in knots? If so…. loosen up, untie, shake, flop, and relax.

 

Instructions

A. Untie the Knots

1. Untie your neck. Roll your head around.
2. Untie your shoulders. Move them up, down, all around.
3. Untie all your knotted muscles and joints from head to toe. Massage and stroke them after you’ve untied them.
4. Untie until you feel nice and loose – like a goose or a moose without a noose!

B. Shake Like Jelly

Now shake like jelly. Shake all over. Go crazy. Jiggle, wiggle, and giggle. You know how.

C. Ragdoll Ann and Ragdoll Andy

Now that you’re untied and jellified, it’s time to hang out in a forward bend.

1. Breathe in and feel your whole body lighten.
2. Breathe out and fold yourself in half, bending from the hips. Do you feel like Ragdoll Ann or Andy?
3. Loosen your neck and let your head and arms hang down. Soft and squishy just like Ann and Andy Ragdoll.
4. To come up, place your hands on your tailbone and inch your fingers up your spine as you slowly straighten up.

Notes for Parents and Teachers

We know what it feels like to be tied up in knots. Children do too. Many times though, they can’t express how they feel without anger or lashing out. These poses are a great way to help them loosen up and relax. Talk about the differences between being all tied up and being loose as a goose. We all know which one feels better and produces those brain hormones, endorphins, which work like magic to help us feel gooooooood.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Awesome Anatomy

As you untie each muscle or joint, say its name. to find the names of most parts of your body.

Musical Musings

Put on some moving and grooving music. Untie. Shake. Flop and play Freeze and Flow – when the music stops, freeze. When the music starts again, flow.

We All Win

Twist a part of your body around a part of another person. Entwine arms, legs, toes or fingers and you see how twisted up you can get. Slowly, gently and peacefully untie. Hang forward. Hang out together.

Talking Turtle

Turtles have mobile homes. Wherever they go, their houses go, too! Their house made of bone and is called a carapace. They wear it, sleep in it, live in it and can be safe and snuggly inside of it.

Instructions

1. Sit down with your legs wide.
2. Flex your feet.
3. Place your hands on the floor.
4. Lift your knees and slide your hands under your knees, as far away from each other as possible.
5. Bend forward at the hips and lengthen your chest along the floor.
6. Rest.
7. Come in and out of your shell as you lift your head up and come back down.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Laughing Language

Sit across from each other in Turtle pose. Take turns coming in and out of your shell. Talk to each other or make sounds. Communicate in your own turtle language.

Visual Vignettes

Use Walnut shells as your carapace. Pipe cleaners or toothpicks as your arms and legs. Create a turtle head. Put them all together.

Ecological Echoes

Turtles have nostrils at the top of their heads so they can breathe while most of their body is under water.

Nutrition Tips

What foods grow on trees and have hard shells that protect them like the turtle does?

Yup. You got it. Nuts.

There are so many types of nuts. Can you guess some of them? Yup, walnuts, pecans, pinyons, pistachios, pecans, macadamias, hazelnuts, cashews, almonds. (The peanut is actually not a nut, but a legume. Other legumes include beans and peas.)

Nuts come from trees. Nuts are a great source of protein for vegetarians. They do not contain cholesterol, but have phytosterols which which keep their oil stable during storage, and may also reduce blood cholesterol levels. Their high levels of copper may be a preventative for hardening of the arteries. Lastly they are a good source of magnesium, which most of us don’t get enough of. Magnesium has been known to lower heart disease in some populations.

So go nuts and get healthy.

Owls are known for their beauty and intelligence. Their amazing eyesight and hearing makes them great hunters too. They can’t move their eyes, but can turn their heads almost full circle.

Instructions

Roll up your yoga mat and turn it into a tree branch. Bend your knees and perch on your branch. Find a place of balance and sit upright, or kneel. Tuck your arms behind you. Hold each elbow with the opposite hand. Slowly turn your head from side to side, eyes wide open. How much of what’s behind you can you see? Can you hoot?

 

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Body Benefits
360º Owl improves balance, posture, and flexibility in the joints, especially the hips, knees and ankles. And it’s fun to inhabit another kind of animal for a short time.

Musical Musings
Owls can flap their wings in silence and are able to hear even the tiniest of sounds in order to find their prey. If you perch quietly in this pose for at least a minute, what tiny sounds can you hear?

Laughing Language
Many owl calls sound to us like human speech: The Great Horned Owl seems to say, “Who’s awake? Me, too!” The Barred Owl says, “Who cooks for you?” What would you say if you were an owl?

Visual Vignettes
Draw a picture of yourself with wings and feathers. What would it feel like to be a bird?

Peace Breath

Peace is a powerful word that has many meanings – love, kindness, quiet, sharing, happy, smiling, gentleness. The peace breath is an easy way to help us feel peace. When you are peaceful, you will help everyone around you be peaceful too.

Instructions

1. Close your eyes. Relax your face. Let your skin just drape down over your bones like a soft blanket. Breathe in.
2. Breathe out and whisper the word peace.
3. Do this 3-6 times. As you exhale and say the word “Peace,” feel the peace within you. Feel the peace around you. Send peace to the animals, trees and plants. Send peace to your family. Send peace to countries in the world that are having wars. Send peace to all the people you love. You are peace.

Activity Ideas for Home and Classroom

Visual Vignettes
What does peace look like? Draw a picture of your peaceful family. Make peace signs and hang them around your house to remind each other to choose peace instead of yelling or shouting.

We All Win
Make up a peace game for you and your friends where everyone is a winner.

Awesome Anatomy
Go through your body parts and organs from head to toes and send each one peace. When you have a tummy ache send peace to your tummy. A headache-send peace to your brain.

Laughing Language
Peace is defined as a state of quiet, calm, tranquility, freedom from war, harmony. Here are a few ways to say it in different languages:

• Egyptian: Hetep
• Greek: Irini
• Italian: Pace
• Japanese: Heiwa
• Swedish: Fred
• Vietnamese: Su Thai Binh
• Zulu: Ukuthula

Affirmations

• I am peace.
• I am kind.
• I help others.
• Peace begins with me.

Oxygen is brain food, so the more you practice this breath, the smarter you’ll be! Your ducky will love the ride on your belly as she surfs on the waves of your breath.

 

Instructions

1. Lie down on your back.
2. Place a rubber ducky or a stuffed animal on your belly.
3. Breathe gently in (your belly rises) and out (belly sinks down). Gently rock your ducky to sleep on your tummy.

 

Note for Parents

Swim Ducky Swim is a great bedtime technique. Place a stuffed animal on your child´s belly and read them a bedtime story that is about that animal. For example, if your child loves the Berenstein Bears, let her pick out her favorite bear to breathe with and read her one of their stories. If one of the If you Give a Moose… books is what he picks, he’ll choose that animal. Making bedtime a relaxed and nurturing time, will serve you and your child well.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Awesome Anatomy

Air comes into our bodies through our nose and mouth, travels down the trachea or windpipe, through the bronchial tubes and into our lungs. Trace the air´s path with your fingers as it moves from your nose all the way through your chest.

Body Benefits

This technique helps children understand how to breathe completely using diaphragmatic, or belly, breathing. The diaphragm is a muscle just below the lungs. It moves like an elevator — up and down.

Math Medley

Play a counting and guessing game with your child. Each night before bedtime, have him pick the number of breaths he thinks it is going to take for him to fall asleep. Advise him in the morning what the number really was. Is it greater than or less than what he predicted?

Pose Instructions

Begin on all fours. Line up your wrists under your shoulders. Spread your fingers wide and arch your spine to the sky. Loosen your neck and drop your head down. Breathe out long and “catlike” as your meow. If you have a pet cat you might already know this combination of poses!

Now lift your chest forward and look up with big “cow eyes.” Dip your belly down and tilt your sit bones (your ischium) up. Your back will sink down like a cow’s. Make cow lips and moo deeply from the back of your throat. Moooooo. Go back and forth, meowing and mooing. Begin with four rounds, and increase to as many times as feels good to you.

This combination can be done sitting too. Your child can sit at the edge of a chair, hands resting on the knees, and move the spine back and forth.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Math Medely/Geometry

The arched cat back is a convex curve; that is, it curves outward instead of inward. The cow spine is concave, which means it curves inward. A scoop of ice cream is convex, but the inside of a cone is concave. Help your child find convex and concave objects, or have them pair convex/concave objects like the ice cream example.

Visual Vignettes/Art

In addition of the math activity, have your children draw different convex and concave objects. Some convex shapes include baseball caps, camels, domes of buildings. Some concave shapes include skating ramps, bowls, funnels. Can you think of more? Draw and label these items.

Awesome Anatomy

The bones that make up the spine are called vertebrae. Humans have 26 vertebrae, while cats and cows have about 52. This pose keeps your spine flexible.

You may have already become a Brave Warrior and a Bold Warrior, too. Now it is time to become a really powerful warrior. Make yourself as powerful as Super Girl and Super Boy.

Instructions

1. Jump your feet apart (Steps 1-6 are just like Bold Warrior.).
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. Shift your weight completely onto your front leg.
8. Pick up your back foot and stretch your leg behind you.
9. Keep both legs as long and strong as possible.
10. Stretch your arms forward. Fly.
11. Change sides.

 

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Body Benefits
Many of our YogaKids also call this pose the Super Boy or Super Girl pose. They like to sway from side to side like they’re flying. Try this version and test your strength and balance.

 

Laughing Language
What makes you a Super Kid? Write down your words or have your mom or a grown-up help you. Here are some examples:

I am a Super Boy cause I can run really fast.
— Conrad, Michigan City, IN

My grandma calls me super girl because I love yoga and can bend in all different ways.
— Amy, New Buffalo, Michigan

I have a super cat and she can jump on and off the roof.
— Ruth, LaPorte, IN

 

We All Win
Try this pose with a partner and help each other.

1. Stand facing one another.
2. Stretch your arms overhead.
3. Bend forward at your hips and take hold of your friends hands, wrists or arms.
4. Balance together. Help each other. Smile at each other.
5. Switch legs.

Nutrition
Kids love to be fed with their airplane spoons when they were little. Their mouth was the hangar and the healthy sweets would come flying in. If your child needs some fun and incentive to eat healthy foods, play ‘Flying Foods.” Zigzag, loop-de-loop or circle her airplane spoon into her mouth filled with small, sweet, delicious fresh fruit pieces like strawberries, blueberries, bananas, mangos or papaya. Organic, naturally sweetened yogurts, whole grain cereals and raisins, currants or other dried fruits may also be appreciated.