Jump, Frog, Jump!

Hello yoga friends new and old! Today was our first of four classes taking place this month at Centered! I am so excited to be able to bring Yoga Storytime into this space, and to meet of all you yoga families today. Each week, I will be posting what we explored in class on this blog, so that you can feel free to keep it going at home. Here's what we did in our first class.

After settling in, we started by greeting one another with a very simple song, "Yoga Time." This song allows each child the opportunity to say his or her name to the group and to be welcomed by all of the others. And it gives each child the opportunity to make music with the chime!

Yoga Time (to the tune of "Frère Jacques")

Hello friends / hello friends

It's yoga time / it's yoga time

We're very glad to see you / We're very glad to see you

Ring the chime / ring the chime

We began warming up our bodies by simply saying "Hello!" to various body parts and moving around organically (wiggling fingers, shaking hands, waving arms, stretching tall, tickling toes, etc.) Then we had our first round of "The Sun Dance" by Bari Koral Family Rock Band, which we are going to use as our main warm-up each week. This song presents a traditional sun salutation in a very child-friendly song, moves through each side once, and allows an opportunity to practice left and right. Don't worry if you got lost today; we are going to have lots of time to practice this one over the next few weeks. Or you can always give it a try at home! 

After warming up our bodies, we were ready for our first book, Jump, Frog, Jump by Robert Kalan, which provided lots of opportunity for animal inspired creative movement and a repeated refrain of "Jump, Frog, Jump!" in which we squatted into frog pose, gave a little hop and let out a "Ribbit!" like a frog! Here are the other animal poses we used:

fly - seated on knees, buzzing like a fly

frog - squat 

fish - a version of locust with arms stretched in front and both arms and legs lifting off the ground like a swimming fish

snake - cobra

turtle - child's pose

net - stretched out wide on backs

kids - sit on knees, stretch arms overhead and wiggle fingers

basket - bound-angle pose with a forward fold

That was a lot of movement, but we're not done yet! Time to get a little silly with "Clap Your Hands" from Here Come the ABCs by They Might Be Giants.

We explored a little more yoga movement using the book The Yoga Game by Kathy Beliveau. We will be adding a few more poses from this book into our practice each week. You can see a little peek into how this book works in the image below:

Finally, it was time to start cooling down. This week we learned a song by Lianne Bassin called "Love Inside My Heart" which actually presents a kid-friendly version of a loving kindness meditation. We find all of the love that we have inside of ourselves and we send it first to ourselves, then to those closest to us, and then out into the whole world. Lianne Bassin's CD of mindfulness music for children called Breathe In will be released on June 20. I can't wait!

We continued cooling down with a reading of The Peace Book by Todd Parr. Then it was time for the most important part of Yoga Storytime, the time when we rest. We took a brief svasana together; isn't it amazing that they will rest like this! It was very brief today, but each week we will add a little more time to our rest. When we sat back up we stayed in our circle to sing farewell to one another, just like we sang welcome to one another in the beginning of our class. 

I hope you had a beautiful rest of your day and that you continue to have a wonderful week. Thank you for letting me play yoga with you for a little while today! I can't wait to see you again next week. Until then, NAMASTE!