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

Begin in mountain pose. Bring the fingertips together at the chest.

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

Activity Ideas for Home or 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
1511 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 1511.)

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
Untie your neck. Roll your head around. Untie your shoulders. Move them up, down, all around. Untie all your knotted muscles and joints from head to toe. Massage and stroke them after you’ve untied them. 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. Breathe in and feel your whole body lighten. Breathe out and fold yourself in half, bending from the hips. Do you feel like Ragdoll Ann or Andy? Loosen your neck and let your head and arms hang down. Soft and squishy just like Ann and Andy Ragdoll. 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.

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

1. Roll up your yoga mat and turn it into a tree branch.
2. Bend your knees and perch on your branch. Find a place of balance and sit upright, or kneel.
3. Tuck your arms behind you. Hold each elbow with the opposite hand.
4. 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 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 drape down over your bones like a soft blanket.
2. Breathe in. 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 within 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?

Instructions

1. Begin on all fours. Line up your wrists under your shoulders.
2. Spread your fingers wide and arch your spine to the sky.
3. Loosen your neck and drop your head down.
4. Breathe out long and “catlike” as your meow. If you have a pet cat you might already know this combination of poses!
5. Now lift your chest forward and look up with big “cow eyes.”
6. Dip your belly down and tilt your sit bones (your ischium) up. Your back will sink down like a cow’s.
7. Make cow lips and moo deeply from the back of your throat. Moooooo.
8. Go back and forth, meowing and mooing. Begin with four rounds, and increase to as many times as feels good to you.

Notes for Parents and Teachers

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 the Home or Classroom

Math Medley
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.

Visual Vignettes
In addition to 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.

Lizards are cousins of dinosaurs and belong to the reptile family. There are thousands of different types of lizards living in all kinds of environments, from rain forests to deserts. The only places lizards don’t like are very, very cold places. Lizards are amazing! Geckos have special toes that allow them to grip and climb surfaces that are too smooth for most other creatures – like glass. Chameleons have built-in camouflage and change color to match their surroundings. Some lizards can swim, some can drop their tails when attacked and grow new ones, and horny toads are covered in spines and shoot blood from their eyes! The smallest lizards are chameleons from Madagascar that are only a few tens-of-millimeters in length, and the biggest ones are the poisonous Komodo dragons of Indonesia, which can reach 10 feet and 150 pounds.

Instructions

1. Lie down on your belly. Place your hands under your shoulders.
2. Spread your fingers out like lizard claws. Bend your lizard toes forward.
3. Push up until your arms and legs are straight. Draw your shoulders back and away from your ears.
4. Walk like a lizard, slowly and carefully. Flick your tongue in and out as you check for danger and maybe catch a bug for a snack. Your scales protect you and will keep you strong and fearless.

Note to Parents and Teachers

Lizard can be practiced in a stationary position, although children like to have lizard races too. If you need them to do something, like a chore or a task, send them off in lizard pose to complete their mission. If grinding the teeth or suffering from TMJ affects you or your child, practicing lizard tongue will help. Flick and loosen the tongue to unlock and relax the jaw.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Laughing Language
Make a lizard tongue twister with the letter L, such as “Long lizards lie lollygagging. . .”

We All Win
Take a lizard walk with a partner while you trade tongue-twisters.

Math Medley
How far can you walk as a lizard? Count the steps or measure the distance in feet and inches.

Awesome Anatomy
Clenching the jaw, sends signals of tightness to the brain via the sensory nerves. The motor nerves then communicate that sense back to the body. Practicing lizard tongue, relaxes the jaw, and alleviates tension.