Yoga Reward, Yoga Match and Forts (Dec. 9th and 11th)

Announcing, Yoga Reward sheets,  a visual guide to help our young yogis, motivate themselves to continue to develop on their yoga journey.  I have shared it with the kids in class this week, and they will be sharing these with you after class on an ongoing basis.  

This week, we engaged the imagination of our younger group by using the Book, Hello Red Fox.  We also used this book to practice our breath work and build focus through breathing.  I love using this book as it not only lends itself to fun yoga poses, but also presents an amazing opportunity to mindfully breathe.  

The kids imagined themselves to be a fox, butterfly, cat bird and fish, and together, we hissed like snakes, flapped our wings, wagged our tails, purred like cats while holding various poses.   Here are some pictures of our little fishes:

 We also challenged ourselves to hold some of the more familiar poses such as dog and snake for more than 2 breath cycles, take a look at their reward sheet to see how they are progressing:)  We are using animal buddies during our relaxation to help us find calm and peace.  Feel free to send in their favorite plushie to be used during relaxation.

The older kids, continue to practice their sun salutation flow, while learning some new poses.  This week we played a fun Yoga match game and learned new poses while building our attention skills.

Victory Pose

Boat pose

What a Happy Turtle!

Making a bridge for Mr. Dino!

Making a bridge for Yoga Star!

Inspiring Turtle pose!

Relaxed Turtle!

Strong Bridge!

Another strong Bridge

We ended our class with Relaxation, where our young super heroes used their imagination and build amazing forts as their retreat centers:)  Thank you David for inspiring us to build these!

Suggested Activity:  Build a place in your house that you can use to relax and find peace as a family.  Imagination is your only limit, but building forts/palaces out of pillows, and sheets is a great place to start!  Call it your family retreat center and unwind and breathe and relax.  With the holidays approaching treat yourself to some peace and quiet!

Thank you Alex for those Yummy Ninja cookies!

We  wanted to express our gratitude to Alex and his mom who so kindly baked some Ninja cookies for our young super heroes.  Everyone really enjoyed these delicious treats, thank you Alex for sharing these with us:)

Let's always remember to be brave, breathe and use these Ninjas as our inspiration while doing our warrior poses:)  

The Science of Happiness - An Experiment in Gratitude

We did this experiment in our yoga class, the older students have written a letter over the last few of weeks, and this week we will be reading these letters out to our special person:)

Give this a try and please feel free to post about your experience on my blog!

StoryTime Yoga, Toe-Ga and more (Dec. 2nd and 4th)

This week the younger kids continued to learn new poses while developing their attention and focus through some fun activities.  We did storytime Yoga using Eric Carle's book, The Greedy Python and at the end we learned a valuable lesson about eating slowly and mindfully so we don't end up like the python.  Ask your child about what happened to the python when he too much too fast.  On Wednesday, we worked on developing our mindful listening by practicing our poses with a faster paced yoga song.  The kids had to listen to the words of the song to be able to move from one pose to another and ended up doing a mini yoga flow routine with the song:)  I was very proud of all the kids, and enjoyed leading them through various poses, Tree to triangle to forward bend, to valley and finally on our bellies as snakes.

We have also tried out some fun partner poses, one of my favorites is pedal laughing, where we connected with a partner and had to pedal our feet in unison and and match the tempo of our laugh to the intensity of pedalling.  Laughter yoga is such a great way to release those happy hormones:)

We also did Yoga for toes on Wednesday and the kids were challenged to a game of Toe-Ga.  Ask them how many pom poms they could collect with their toes?  The kids really enjoyed this game, and I loved watching each of them develop their focus and balance as they tried to collect those tiny pom poms with their feet.

The older kids were challenged to do some yoga flows as they continue to develop their practice, we imagined ourselves to be transformers and moved from one pose to another while learning the sun salutation flow.  We also continue to explore partner poses such as partner tree and downward dog and backward bend.  These partner poses are ones that you can try out with your kids and I guarantee it will lead to a lot of joyful moments:)

The older kids also had a chance to practice yoga for the toes, and we played Toe-Ga as they challenged themselves to lift the pom poms with their dominant foot and the less dominant foot.  I have also introduced them to some Yoga Mudras, a form of hand yoga, that activates various pressure points in their fingers, and further develops their focus and attention.

With the holidays around the corner, we have also been thinking a lot about gratitude and being grateful for not only the things we have, but the people in our lives who make everyday so special.  Take a look at the video titled,  "The Science of Happiness," on my blog.  Ask your child who they picked as their special person and over the holidays take some time to do this activity as a family!

Suggested activity: Give someone the Gift of Gratitude this Holiday. Use the guide below to write a letter to one special person, gransparent, teacher, sibling, coach etc and then read the letter to that person. Feel the happiness and know that you have made someone else also feel very happy:)

Think of one person in your life who did/does something really amazing or important for you.  

Write a letter to that person.  Some of the things to write about are:

Why is this person so important?

List all the special things that this person does for you every day and how that makes you feel.

Thank that person for all those things that they do for you.