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.

Dogs have been our best friends for over 12,000 years. They frequently roam in packs, just like many kids do!

Instructions

1. Begin on your hands and knees in all fours.
2. Bend your toes forward.
3. Spread your fingers wide.
4. Press your doggy paws and heels downward, as you lift your hips and tail to the sky.
5. Lengthen your spine. Stretch your arms and legs as long as possible.
6. Release your neck and head down.
7. Growl, yawn, bark and make other doggy sounds!

Mark Your Territory!
Bend your knee and rotate your belly and chest upward. Raise one leg up and ‘mark your territory’ just like dogs do. Keep your hands pressing downward and your arms straight. Dogs leave their scent so other animals know they´ve been there. Lift your opposite leg too.

Note to Parents and Teachers

Take turns walking the dog. Children love to “walk their parents” and give them instructions too. This role reversal is very empowering and fun for the kids. Grab a hold of the back of their shirt like you´re holding a leash. Lead them around. Give them directions; slower, faster, turn around, sit, stay, roll over. Let your doggy rest after the walk. Have her lie on her back with her arms and legs in the air. Scratch her behind her ears. Scratch her belly too. Give her a bone and a kiss on her nose before she rolls over and stretches back into Down Diggety Doggy Down.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Body Benefits
This pose strengthens the legs and arms as well as relieves stiffness in the shoulders. With regular practice, Down Dog can also help correct curvature of the spine such as scoliosis.

Math Medley/Musical Musings/We All Win
Play the Canine Calling game. One child creates a pattern of growls, barks and other doglike sounds. The other child repeats it, and adds more sounds. Go back and forth. Have fun with your whole family.

Awesome Anatomy
This pose works the muscles of the legs; ankles, calves and hamstrings. Share the names of all the body parts this pose can benefit!

Character Education
Dogs that are treated well have great loyalty to their owners. What does it mean to be loyal? What are some of the ways children can take care of their dogs? Grooming, feeding, loving…..what else can you do to keep your pet safe and happy?

Instructions

1. Stand back to back with a partner.
2. Both partners take one “baby step” forward.
3. Reach back and take hold of each other’s hands or wrists.
4. Keep your feet rooted to the floor and lean gently away from each other until you both feel a nice stretch opening your shoulders and chest.
5. Come back to center, release your hands, and fold forward.
6. Hang your body loose, then slowly roll up.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Science
Analyze the physics of this pose. What would happen if either partner let go of the other’s hands? Why does this pose work best with partners of approximately equal weight?

Art
Discuss the concept of symmetry in this pose and in works of art. Then ask your students to create symmetrical art of their own.

Body Benefits
Opens the shoulders, builds arm strength, and engages the core muscles. Builds coopertaions, trust and balance.

Instructions

1. Sit with your legs wide apart in a triangle position.
2. Flex your heels and bend your toes toward you.
3. The person with the smaller triangle should press both heels into the other person’s inner ankles. Keep your sit bones planted in the earth.
4. Reach your arms straight to your partner and take hold of each other’s wrists or hands.
5. One partner bends forward at the hip hinge, while the other leans back. The person leaning back gently guides the other into a satisfying forward bend.
6. After a few breaths, switch the person being pulled forward and the person leaning back. Gently rock each other back and forth.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Math Medley
Use the See Saw motion to help students master their multiplication tables. For example, you ask “2 X 2 equals?” Students rock and answer, “4.” You ask, “2 X 3 equals?” Students rock and answer in unison.

Musical Musings
As your students rock and forth in this pose, sing songs together. Rock to the beat. Younger children can sing nursery rhymes while older students can rock to, well… rock!

Body Benefits
The See Saw is a fun way to stretch the groin and hamstrings, open the hips, and strengthen the abdominal muscles.

Instructions

1. Lie on your back, arms at your sides.
2. Bring the bottoms of your feet together and open your knees outward to make a fish tale.
3. Press your feet together and flap your legs up and down.
4. Slide your hands, palms down, underneath your backside.
5. Squeeze your shoulders together, press into your elbows and lower arms, and arch your back as your chest lifts off the floor.
6. Place the top of your head on the floor.

Activity Ideas for Home or Classroom

Ecological Echoes
Imagine you have gills instead of lungs. Fish breathe by taking water in through their mouths and pushing it out through their gills. Feel your gills open and close you breathe. Make fish lips and blow bubbles!

Body Benefits
With the head upside-down, the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain increases, making this pose simultaneously energizing and calming