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?

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!