Yoga at the Library!

 Yoga and the library? Oh, be still my heart! Don't you just love it when your favorite things come together? As a former Children's Librarian at the Lexington Public Library, it is a high honor for me to have the opportunity to lead this series of Yoga Storytime. Welcome! I'm so glad that you have found the class, that you have found the blog, and that you are interested in keeping the yoga fun going at home.

First thing is a big thank you to parents/caregivers for taking the time out of your day to bring your child to the library this week. You rock! You probably already know this, but you are the first and most important teacher of your child. All of the ways in which you make the effort to interact with your kiddo (such as through books, songs, movement and conversation) make a HUGE difference in helping to prime your kiddo's brain to be ready for school and all the learning to come down the road. So seriously, you are awesome.

A little reminder, kids' yoga is quite different from grown-up yoga. We aren't using any Sanskrit names, or worrying about alignment. In fact, as long as everyone is safe and disruptions are minimal, there really are no "have-to's" in yoga storytime. Depending on many factors unique to your child, you may see him or her choose to participate enthusiastically, watch from a distance, try out a few moves, or contentedly stick with one move s/he really enjoys. All of this is fine! Yoga storytime is all about exploring breath and creative movement through stories, songs and imaginative play. There is plenty of room for many unique variations of anything we may be doing. You don't have to worry about helping your child do any of the movements "right." I encourage you to participate at your comfort level, offering lots of positive encouragement and support to your kiddo as s/he explores the activities at her/his own pace.

Here's what we got up to this first week at Yoga Storytime.

We started off in our circle greeting everyone by time with our "Yoga Time" song"

Yoga Time (to the tune of "Hello Thumbkin")

Hello [NAME], Hello [NAME]

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.

Next we settled our attention on the breath. I use a nifty little prop called a mini Hoberman sphere for this breath so the kids can visualize breath going in and filling up their internal balloon and deflating it as they breathe out. We began warming up our bodies with a version of this warm-up song from Storytime Yoga®:

Now we were ready to move with our first story, so we read Stretch by Doreen Cronin, a simple rhyming story that encourages a lot of creative movement.

Here are some of the movements that the story introduces:

Seated with lifted arms

Reverse warrior (picking an apple)

Standing twist

Down dog

Lion

Swimming

Warrior II (surfing)

Cat/Cow (inchworm)

Star floating in space

Then it was time to shake out all of those movements like our legs, arms, heads and whole bodies were made of spaghetti with "Spaghetti Legs" from Jim Gill Sings the Sneezing Song and Other Contagious Tunes by Jim Gill. This fabulous CD is available from the library (for free!). 

We explored some animal movements with From Head to Toe by the one and only Eric Carle. After this we introduced our sun salutation, which we will do each week along with the song "Dance for the Sun" from Dance for the Sun by Kira Wiley. This will be our signal each week that our movement time is starting to come to a close. 

We ended with one more story, The Feel Good Book by Todd Parr. Then we took a rest in savasana...isn't it amazing that they will actually lie still for a minute or two! As we began greeting one another, we ended the same, this time with our "So Long" song.

So great to meet you all this week! Thanks so much to the library for bringing us together. Until next time, NAMASTE!