June Book Club Review- Yoga

Yoga is an integral part of our Mindful Kids Resilience program because going through a variety of yoga poses helps children learn about their bodies and the movements they’re capable of doing. The breathing and relaxation techniques assist with managing anxiety, improving concentration and many other key benefits.

To entice and engage the children in yoga, we have a selection of yoga posters, yoga dice, flash cards and books to choose from, which the children love participating and working collectively from, to assist with their practice.

For our June book club review, we have reviewed two books, modified to each age group.

• “Little Yoga” beautifully illustrated by Rebecca Whitford and Martina Selway for Little Fish and Dolphins; and
• “ABC Yoga” by Christiane Engel for Snakes and Sea Turtles.

Each room modified this practise for their age group, read more to learn what this looks like in the classroom setting.

Sea Turtles Room Book Club Review

Yoga is the perfect way for children to explore their bodies & improve self-confidence because its non-competitive. If it feels good, it is good.

Children in pre- prep are full of energy, questions, excitement for learning, and are usually in awe of school and its exciting new things.

They love to learn new things and are so excited to make connections between things they know and new information.

Pre-prep ages are also constantly wanting to move, wiggle, and explore their movement abilities.

Yoga is a wonderful way to help kids channel their physical energy and intellectual willingness at the same time.

In the past we have experienced yoga poses on their own with the aids of the educator displaying movements, flash cards and even the interactive screen to help them develop coordination, balance, strength, flexibility, cross body awareness and function, and so much more.

Pre-prep aged children are excellent yogis, partly because they are fairly well developed at many large motor activities. However, they are still learning their way around more complex body movements and fine kinesthetic awareness — a skill you can learn with yoga poses.

Plus, they are still eager to try new things without embarrassment or fear!

Over our time exploring the ABC Yoga book the children voiced that attempting these poses made them ‘feel good’, ‘happy’, and ‘relaxed’. The children enjoyed looking at the beautiful coloured pictures that related to many animals, some that we hadn’t heard of before. Having the alphabet as a learning tool the children connected with the book by attempting to spell their names using the letters and connecting poses. This has created a stepping stone to our School Readiness learning and follow up opportunities. 

Some favourite pages from the book

• Crocodile – Because it starts with my name;
• Fish – I can see the bones in the picture;
• Moon – I like bending my body;
• Shark- it’s funny to lay on my belly;
• Yak- I didn’t know about that animal;
• Tiger- because it was easy to do; and
• Rainbow- because I got to do it with a friend.

Children enjoy learning and exploring new things together. By introducing paired yoga poses, children can build trust, communication, and teamwork skills while still practicing yoga. They can work in pairs or groups and assist each other in achieving different poses.

In addition to yoga

In addition, we practice our breathing exercises for pre-prep to have fun while calming their bodies back down.

After a Yoga exercise warm up, it’s important to give the children a chance to calm their body back down with some breathing exercises.

There are lots of fun breathing exercises you can practice with little kids. Many are animal themed just like the book and others are just a fun way to incorporate hand movements. The children’s favourite breath is breathing like a lion.

Remember that children learn best when they are having fun and enjoying themselves, especially when it’s relevant and relatable to them. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all lesson plan for yoga, but instead we will continue to be creative and make the classes an exciting, enjoyable, and meaningful experience for children, so they will be happy to come back for more!

Miss Tracy X

Snakes Room Book Club Review

“ABC YOGA’ is a fun family read, this interactive title is perfect for teaching children their ABCs, as well as introducing them to familiar animals and basic, simplified yoga poses that promote health and well-being. Each letter of the alphabet is paired with an engaging illustration mimicking the various animals’ natural movements.

The 26 yoga poses, one for each letter of the alphabet, are renamed for easy understanding, while an index at the end of the book identifies the correct name for each asana (yoga pose) for the adults. The engaging illustrations and playful rhymes encourage children and their parents to get up and move, promoting physical activity, learning, and togetherness.

What this looked like in our classroom

We read the ABC yoga book in a group setting over several days, choosing a handful of poses each day. After experiencing all the animal poses, some being more difficult than others, we discussed as a collective, what poses everyone enjoyed the most.

With that in mind, we intentionally headed out to the environmental yard, where we had fresh air to fill our lungs and more space to spread out.

Each child was asked to lead the class with a pose from the book, different from their peers. The elephant and crocodile poses were more favourable, but we will continue to practise those poses that were more difficult.

Extension Activity

Games are a good warm up exercise to increase focus and engagement. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Mirror, mirror.
2. Yogi says.
3. Red light, green light yoga.

1.Mirror Mirror

• One person starts as the leader. The leader chooses a pose to do and shows it to the others.
• The other players copy the leader’s pose as if they are looking into a mirror.
• Change the leader with each round of poses, so that everyone has a turn at being the leader

2. Yogi says

One person is selected as the Yogi. The other players must do the yoga poses that the Yogi tells them to do if the instruction starts with “Yogi says.” If the Yogi doesn’t use “Yogi says,” then players do not do the pose. Keep changing the person who is Yogi, so that everyone gets a turn.

3. Red light, green light yoga

One person is chosen as the Stoplight. He or she stands at the front of the room. The other players are the “cars,” and they start at the opposite wall. The Stoplight starts the game by calling “Green light!” The other players then use yoga poses to move forward. When the Stoplight calls “Red light!,” each player needs to be in a yoga pose and remain still. Everyone takes a turn being the Stoplight.

Teaching Yoga at home

• Start with simple yoga like “Baby Yoga”
• Encourage children to do the posture the right way.
• Demonstrate the posture yourself.
• Tell a yoga story – combining a story with yoga asanas.
• Play yoga games – such as musical yoga, yoga cards, yoga dice etc.
• Make it fun!

Miss Hannelie X

Dolphins Room Book Club Review

We first explored this book by, lying flat on the grass in the environmental yard our Dolphins’ friends where mesmerized by the serenity of nature, embracing each moment as they closed their eyes and took deep breaths in and out. The children lay still and listened to the words of the “Little yoga” book by Rebecca Whitford.

With eyes closed the children were asked to “spread their arms like a butterfly”, “Wobble like a little bird”, and lastly take a big deep breath in and out and enjoy the sounds of the serenity, connecting to mother earth to create balance between their body heart and mind.

We then adventured further by gathering hands, placing The” Little Yoga” book on the ground and exploring different poses. The Dolphin children recognised a pose that incorporates the mindful breathing technique that they visit each day… The “Lion breath”.

On the count of three “RAWWWR” our friends all looked at each other and started to laugh. Little yoga offers a playful introduction for young children exploring the wonders of connecting within themselves.

Over the past week the little yoga book was explored and each day the children brought back to the lion pose, which is safe to say the classrooms favourite pose.

Here in the Dolphin’s room we use yoga as a redirection tool especially during mat time, when we are losing the groups focus. We are working with toddlers after all and their attention span is around 3- 6 minutes, at any given time.

We will continue to explore different yoga and breathing techniques to tap into inner creativity, body movement, balance and calming strategies and lastly, extend their concentration in readiness for the transition into Snakes room next year.

Miss Sabrina X

Little Fish Room Book Club Review

In the Little Fish Room, we incorporate yoga on a regular basis as part of our Mindful Kids program. Yoga provides children, and adults, with a plethora of health benefits:

• Muscle strength and flexibility,
• Core strength,
• Mobility of joints, and
• Digestive health to name just a few in the physical body.

Along with keeping us healthy physically, yoga also supports us emotionally, spiritually and cognitively. It really is a thorough care practice for our entire wellbeing.

Facilitating Children’s interests

Book reviews in our 6wk to 18 mths age group are always interesting. We learn from children as they learn from us and one thing we learn from them is…. the plan is, there is no plan.

We review a particular book once a month as part of our resilience kit of extensive tools. Reviewing the book “Little Yoga” by Rebecca Whitford, we take traditional yoga poses and make it simpler and therefore more interesting for children in the Little Fish room age group. Well, that was the plan! The children had other ideas.

We read the book daily over the course of the week, adding it to our regular group time activities. The children responded to the book differently each day. Some days they were happy to follow the pictures and imitate the poses from the book, their educators and fellow peers and other days they just wanted to vocalise the sounds.

The older children in the group were easily able to imitate the poses from the pictures or from others in the room. Whereas the younger babies were assisted with achieving a pose, getting help from educators. The children were rather serious on these days, and showed a lot of concentration while trying to hold the poses.

On other days, vocalising the noise each animal makes, sounded a little like this:

• growling like a lion,
• “eek, eekk” like a monkey,
• meowing like the cat and
• “woof woof woof” for the dog.

On these days we found the children were much more playful, they wanted to make noise and giggle at all the sounds that were being made by themselves and those around them.

Inclusivity

Even if the youngest of the children can’t yet participate on their own, we help them to feel involved by, assisting with poses and in general making the experience positive and fun. As they grow and develop, they will be enticed to join in as they’re felt the positivity from the activity along their journey and will be excited and willing to give things a go themselves.

Overall, the children in Little Fish Room love having interactive group times. At this age group, this helps them to feel more involved in the learning process and when learning is fun, they enjoy every minute.

Extension Activity

To follow up from the Little Yoga book, we will be participating in the Bright Kids Centre Yoga Day. This is where all the children from different age groups come together as a collective, to enjoy a yoga practice out in the Environmental yard.

Learning Journey

As a class, we will continue to incorporate yoga into our exercise regime, slowly introducing other animal poses and incorporating breathing techniques we have previously learnt in our Mindful Kids program. By learning incrementally and slowly combining them, we create a well-rounded yoga practice that the children really enjoy and benefit from.

When interactive components are added to group time, we find that the children stay focused for a little while longer than usual. In turn, developing their attention span as well.

We encourage all children to give it all a go, because even if it’s  not done “perfectly”, we are creating the foundations to build on throughout their journey here at Bright Kids, and beyond into their healthy life practices.

Miss Natasha X

Yoga has a positive impact on children’s well-being

1. It helps children manage their anxiety- Through the breathing exercises and relaxation techniques
2. Improves children’s emotional regulation- By teaching children to be in the present moment while relaxing and gaining a peaceful state of mind.
3. Yoga boosts children’s self-esteem. Yoga for kids can do wonders for their self-esteem. Perfecting a pose or improving their balance and flexibility can give young children a sense of personal empowerment.
4. Yoga increases children’s body awareness and mindfulness. Going through a variety of yoga poses helps children learn about their bodies and the movements they’re capable of doing.
5. Yoga enhances children’s concentration and memory. One of the top benefits of kids’ yoga is that the different types of moves requires children to focus and work on their memorization skills—both of which can translate over into their academic performance.
6. Yoga develops children’s strength and flexibility. Yoga helps strengthen children’s growing bodies and helps them improve their flexibility, which can reduce their chance of injury.
7. Yoga teaches discipline and reduces impulsivity. Yoga can reduce challenging behaviors in the classroom by providing a physical outlet for children to express themselves. It also teaches children about discipline as they work on clearing their minds and perfecting their poses.

Our Program

Our ‘Mindful Kids’ resilience program is embedded and modified to every age group. The books and activities we incorporate assist with the teachings of consolidating and harnessing these life long skills.

Each month we review a different book from our book club. Some will correlate tools for children and some will be parent/educator interconnected.

Let us know your thoughts and if there is anything you wish to share, we would love to hear from you.

That’s all from the Bright Kids team until next time

Miss Honey-Nicodah x

Also please follow our Facebook and Instagram Pages and stay up to date