Yoga Time!

My first yoga student, Little K practicing Tree Pose in Hawaii

I started doing yoga with the two and three year olds in my class around Christmas time when the temperatures first began dropping below the point that we were able to take the kids outside. After being accustomed to at least an hour a day of running around and playing outside, it quickly became apparent that my co-teacher, Amy and I needed to come up with something active to keep our kids (and ourselves) from going insane, all cooped-up inside for the remainder of the cold season. We started with a few fun songs and dancing activities found on YouTube, many of which Amy had used at her previous school. The kids LOVED this and we found ourselves scrambling daily to come up with more songs to extend this new favorite time of day in our classroom. At the time, our "movement" time happened to fall right before our circle time meetings and we needed a way to bring the group back down to a place where they could calmly sit for our meeting. So at the end of our dancing and marching around the classroom, we all gathered together for some seated, yoga-like movements, ending in a little focused breathing. This worked marvelously and so began the incorporation of yoga into our daily routine.

A few of my favorite yoga resources for kids...

That weekend, I went to my local library on a mission to find a particular yoga book called You Are A Lion, I was introduced to back in Seattle through the library's book-mobile program. Not only did I find what I was looking for, but the librarian who assisted me, introduced me to a wealth of new books to explore. I promptly checked them out, some picture books and some reference, and brought them in to introduce to our class. My tried and true favorite was the perfect book to help the kids get engaged and take their introductory practice to a whole new level, learning the names of the poses and a handful of fun new ones that invited the kids to make animals sounds and incorporate their high energy and silliness into their practice rather than avoid it. I also brought in my personal set of yoga cards and let the kids and we went through a few of them each day, learning the names and even more new poses. They were so interested in our yoga activities that we started incorporating yoga practice into our regular work-time (aka free-play). I set the cards out as a special activity on the table, along with the children's reference books and picture books so that the kids could practice them and choose the poses they wanted me to demonstrate for them.

My pose cards we used before finding the Yoga Pretzel cards shown above

The more we practiced our yoga together (usually for 10-15 minutes at a time, once or twice daily), the more advanced the kids became. Now, three months later, our class has yet to lose interest in our yoga activities and now enjoy a more advanced, call-and-response practice where I say, "show me tree pose," and "show me mountain pose," rather than me leading with the pose first saying "now I'm going to stand tall and straight with my hands high above my like a mountain," the way I first did when introducing each pose. Each child has his and her favorite poses and they often request them, or point out the names of poses when they notice someone making a similar movement with their body. Not all the kids want to participate every time, but the large majority are eager to jump in whenever we start up with some yoga. The fail safe, however is called "Twinkle, Twinkle Yoga," and whenever I start up this yoga activity, every child joins in every time. I learned this one from Helen Garabedian's wonderful book Itsy Bitsy Yoga for Toddlers and Preschoolers, and it is so perfect in it's simplicity that any teacher or parent with zero knowledge or training in yoga can easily implement with their children. All you have to do is stand with your legs and arms apart, making a star with your body and rock back and forth from foot to foot, energetically "twinkling" your fingers and singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. It is so easy, the kids absolutely love it every time, and it does unspeakable wonders for getting the attention and focus of every single child in the room, bringing them to a place where they are ready to listen upon conclusion.

I personally love yoga, and although I rarely go to formal classes anymore, it is a part of my every day routine both at home and in my classroom. From reading Garabedian's book and from my own experience doing yoga with my young students, I cannot say enough about the benefits of incorporating even the smallest amount of yoga practice into your daily school curriculum, or routine at home. Here are just a few of the many reasons why I recommend adding a little yoga to your day with your little one(s):

Great reference book filled with pictures of kids doing poses

• Practicing yoga helps children develop balance, coordination, large motor control, focus, and concentration
• Regular yoga encourages healthy circulation and increases oxygen to the brain 
• Yoga can be a fantastic self-soothing exercise and a fun way to practice patience 
• The command over the body developed in yoga builds confidence in physical skills and can improve self-esteem
• Certain poses (those where weight is on shoulders, arms, and wrists) can help develop muscle strength needed for improving fine motor skills, particularly those needed for writing later on
• Yoga can help relax and calm children and adults, assuage stress and encourages mindfulness, especially good for before nap or bedtime for deeper sleep
• Doing yoga with children offers a fun bonding experience for everyone involved and can do wonders for relationship building.

So go on, pick up one of the books I've shown, do a little online reading and research, or just jump right in with Twinkle, Twinkle Yoga, you're bound to have a blast and your kids/students will love it even more!

Stone Soup

I have been teaching with this story for years, starting way back when I was first working as a summer camp and after-school counselor in high school and college. In fact, I can't even remember which group first introduced the story of Stone Soup to me, but whomever it was, I am grateful for the introduction. If you've never read this story, go pick it up and read it the next chance you get. It is a beautiful story about coming together as a community, opening your heart and working together for the common good. There are many versions of this classic tale, but I am partial to author and illustrator, Jon J. Muth's version, mostly because I think his gentle watercolor style so perfectly brings to life the feelings in the story. I personally just love all of his work, but Marcia Brown's version is also really great. Just before Christmas, I had the chance to share this story with my class and although they are just a bit young for it, I couldn't resist and at least a few of them really got into it and that's good enough for me. I asked the group at the end what they liked best and while some loved the illustrations, just as I do, many of them pointed out different veggies and ingredients featured in the soup as their favorite part. Since I am always looking for a chance to incorporate food into my curricula, I was naturally thrilled.

Whenever I share one of my favorite books with a class, I always pay attention to the bits and pieces they connect with the most and do whatever I can to bring those pieces to life, weaving them throughout the rest of the curriculum. With this story, I have often had each of the kids pick an ingredient to bring in and we've made stone soup together in a crock-pot as a class and enjoyed it for our lunch, which is always a huge hit. Cooking projects are one of my favorite ways to bring a story to life because they are so multi-sensory and therefore leave a much larger imprint on one's memory. With a story like this one, highlighting the strong messages of community and open-mindedness, I definitely want the memory to stick. I also love to cook with kids because they are usually fascinated by the process and eager to participate. Because I feel so gypped from not learning more (or much of anything) about food in school when I was young, I want to cultivate this interest as much as possible in my students. It baffles me that growing and preparing food, something so crucial to human culture and survival gets so neglected in most schools, but I suppose I'll save my feelings on the subject for another time because I could go on and on and I don't want to get off track from Stone Soup... If you are interested, however, check out my Kids in the Kitchen pinboard for more inspiration in food education.

Felt carrot, asparagus, and purple sweet potato I made for little K back in HI

Anyway, since my kiddos happened to be drawn to the ingredients involved in making stone soup, I thought, perhaps I will use this as an opportunity to finally develop a set of felt food for our play kitchen. Since not all of the kids were interested in this story, that tells me that instead of sharing it with the group as our circle-time read, I will next time offer to read it in the book nook with those who are interested, as a choice during our open work time. Most of the kids will wander over and listen at least for a little while each time I read it, while others will savor it again and again. Whatever their preference, all of them will inevitably be exposed to the ideas in the story as they work their way through the rest of the curriculum. By stocking our play kitchen with felt versions of the ingredients in the story, the kids will have the chance to incorporate Stone Soup into their play, and this has so many benefits from literacy development, to deepening their knowledge of food and the process of creating meals, to bringing the important message of community to the center stage, not to mention the exposure to different cultural groups in the mountains of the Himalayas. I think I'll take it one step further and capitalize on my class's budding interest in using scissors and invite them to practice cutting out pictures of food in magazines to glue down to a paper plate, making their own "stone soup" that they can take home. I swear, a few good stories can be a teachers best friend and savior, I don't know what I'd do without them.

A Very Busy Season

Now that I'm teaching full time again, I'm remembering how exhausted I get after spending all day in the classroom. While I may not have time to keep up with my posts as regularly as I would like, I still want to share what I've been working on, so until I can find the time to write more, I'll be sticking with more photo documentation. Here's a sneak peak at what we've been up to this holiday season...

We've started making a weekly batch of homemade play dough and the kids have really gotten into it. Perhaps it's because we skipped on the food coloring, but the kids have focused all of their play dough energy into baking. They started out right away pretending to be making pancakes describing to me all their favorite toppings for this beloved breakfast food including syrup, strawberries, blueberries, whipped cream, etc. I am always one to encourage a person's interest in food and cooking, as it happens to be a personal passion of mine, so I jumped at the chance to share one of my favorite Eric Carle stories with our group. It's a longer and more wordy story so instead of sharing it with the class as a whole during one of our circle time meetings, I offered it as one of the choices during our morning work time (aka free play) session. A few of my regular story kids chose to come join my in the book nook for a reading and liked it so much that I ended up reading the book more times than I can count throughout the day and following weeks. It was incredible to see how the story added volumes to their play dough creations, giving them the language to describe what they were making and the understanding of the process of making actual pancakes from scratch. As the holidays drew closer, I came across Amy Rosenthal's story and shared it with my kids, offering them holiday cookie cutters to their play dough tools and a bunch of nutmeg to the batch so it smelled like cookies. The last day before Christmas vacation started, we re-read the cookie book and made our own batch of moon shaped sugar cookies following the recipe printed at the end of the story. As we were mixing the cookie dough, the kids all crowding around and anxiously awaiting their turn to mix the dough, they noticed how similar it was to the process of making play dough. Next step to expanding their knowledge of the many uses for flour, fresh, hand-rolled pasta and a good old Strega Nona story.

Behind the playdough display, you'll notice my classroom's play kitchen. To further bring these stories to life, I plan to start working on some pasta and pancake felt food to add showcase in the kitchen, along with the appropriate play tools for making them, like a pot and colander and a frying pan and spatula. We also have a variety of different kinds of dried pasta in our sensory table currently for the kids to explore. You can check out my inspiration for projects on the Welcome to My Classroom pinboard, and find more inspiration for bringing food into focus in early education on my Kids in the Kitchen pinboard. While the kids were busy playing with playdough, I was working on some seasonal, simpler felt projects that I got out just in time for our very snowy Christmas season here in Maine. Hope all of your Holidays were as filled with enjoyment as ours were.

I cut and sewed together a handful of simple felt ornaments and offered them alonside a rather large felt tree which I set out as one of our daily table activities during the few weeks leading up to Christmas so that our little 2 and 3 year olds had a tree at school that they could decorate however they pleased. The project was a big hit and the kids loved watching me stitch up the ornaments and making suggestions on what I should make next for the tree. 

Here's the tree all decorated, the kids always insisted that the star go on top :)

The success of the felt Christmas tree inspired my co-teacher and I to set up a permanent felt board in our classroom. We put it in the story corner as an alternative quiet time activity, since not all of our kids are interested in looking at books all the time, and there are many times, like right after snack when we are cleaning up before transitioning into either getting dressed for outside, or an indoor session of group movement activities like yoga and dancing. So to start off our felt board, I threw together some basic shapes so the kids can build snowmen on the days its too cold or rainy to build them outside. A few of the girls in my group were interested in the activity while I was making it and were psyched when I asked for advice on what to make next. They asked me for "green feet" and "yellow arms" and hats and extra eyes, and lips. So far the snowman felt board has only been out for 2 days but it's been a big hit and I can't wait to get started on the next board themed, "Space & Sky."

Snowman Decorated Felt Board

Basket of Snowman Parts