Swim with the Fishes!

Hi there little yogis, families and caregivers! I had a whale of a time swimming with the fishes with you in Yoga Storytime at Baby Moon this week. Thanks for coming and making it so much fun! If you want to keep the fun going at home, here's what we did.

We started off as always, finding a nice, happy seat and singing our "Yoga Time" song. Take a look at last week's Buggin' Out class post if you'd like a refresher on the words and tune. We also continued to use the "Breathe It In, Breathe It Out" song to warm up our bodies.

To continue connecting with the breath, we practiced our Whale Breath. Imagine a whale spurting water out of its blowhole at the surface of the ocean; this was our inspiration for our Whale Breath. To practice, first find a happy seat (tall, comfortable seated position). Take a nice deep inhalation through the nose. Then forcefully exhale the breath through the mouth, strongly enough to make an audible sound. Take a couple of regular breaths and then come back to the Whale Breath again.

Our first book was Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins, which is simply a celebration of fish of all sorts. This book is great to use one-on-one with kids in all kinds of ways. It rhymes, which helps reinforce the development of phonological awareness, an important early literacy skill critical to the decoding process in later learning to read. It provides lots of opportunities for interaction, such as counting, describing what one sees and acting out or imitating the various shapes presented in the illustrations. It promotes a lovely message about embracing diversity - this little fishy has all kinds of different friends and they are all beautiful! And, there is a nice invitation specifically for moms and little fish kiddos to cuddle together at the end - who doesn't love that!

I brought out a flannelboard that I made to provide some visual stimulation as we sang "The Sharks in the Sea" to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." You can take a look at the flannelboard pieces on my other blog if you are interested in making your own. Here's how we practiced:

The sharks in the sea go chomp, chomp, chomp... - Stretch arms out to the sides and clap together in front of the body

The lobsters in the sea go pinch, pinch, pinch... - From table top, stretch one arm out in front of body and make a pinching motion with the hand. Release arm back to table and repeat on the other side.

The clams in the sea go open and shut... - Sit in staff pose with arms lifted overhead (open) and bend forward into forward bend touching the toes (shut). Rise up and repeat.

The seahorse in the sea rocks back and forth... - Kneel up high on knees and rock body slightly forward and backward.

The octopus in the sea goes wiggle, wiggle, wiggle... - Stand up and wiggle your whole body!

The kids in the sea jump up and down...

Where do all these creatures live? In the sea? If we wanted to go to sea, how would we get there? Hmmm....in a boat! We spent a little time practicing boat pose on our own and with partners. This is a fun pose to practice together at home while singing, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." Personal side note, I know as an adult, I look back on a lot of nursery rhymes that I learned as a kid and find them rather disturbing. This one is an obvious exception. I think I understand it and appreciate more and more the older that I get. It's a great fit for a yoga class!

Time for another story, this time Swimmy by Leo Lionni. This Caldecott Honor book is a children's classic. There is a lot to talk about regarding emotions when sharing this book with kids. After all, it starts out with Swimmy's whole family being eaten right in front of him - yikes! But don't let that turn you away from the book. You can talk about the tuna fish being a tuna fish, simply doing what tuna fish do, and how that affected Swimmy. Equanimity is a tough concept even for well-adjusted adults, but this book presents a kid-friendly way to talk about it. You can talk about Swimmy's sad and lonely feelings, and how he was able to recover. And you can talk about Swimmy's bravery and the clever way that he helped his new fish family defend themselves from the bigger fish by working together. It's a classic for a reason!

We let the sea creature friends that Swimmy met inspire another round of creative movement:

jellyfish - standing forward fold with dangling arms

lobster - table pose, stretching arms out to pinch one at a time

seaweed - high kneeling, swaying from side to side

strange fish - bow pose

eel - locust pose

sea anemones - crescent moon pose

big fish - boat pose (individually or with a partner)

By now we needed some silly movement, so we sang and danced along to "The Goldfish" from The Best of the Laurie Berkner Band by Laurie Berkner.

One of the parts of Swimmy that I really like is the idea of working together, that we are stronger as a group than any one of us is on our own. So we played around with some group movement, like a school of fish working together. We used this activity to begin to cool down. You can do any movements together that you like if you have a group to play with. If it's just two, try mirroring each other's movements instead.

To continue cooling down we did read Breathe by Scott Magoon. We finished as we began with a few rounds of Whale Breath. Then we rested and sang goodbye to all our yoga friends.

Thanks for coming to another round of Yoga Storytime at Baby Moon! We will start up a new, three-week session on Tuesdays at 4 PM beginning April 7, 2015. Hope to see lots of you then. Until the next time, have fun at home and NAMASTE!