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.

Celebrations and Farewell

This was another eventful week, as we celebrated Avaneesh's birthday on Monday and then with a heavy heart said farewell to Pearce, who will be going back to Australia.  We will miss you Pearce!

To celebrate Avaneesh's special day we went through yoga poses corresponding to the letters in his name.  We had fun trying out new poses like valley and nectar pose and practicing some older ones such as Alive, Elephant and Snake.  We also did the warrior series of poses that help us feel strong, bold and brave:)  During our Wednesday class, we revisited some of the poses from the What I can See I Can be book, and then we went on an imaginary jungle adventure.  I had brought in a special song for them and we used the words in the song to cue us into many fun yoga animal poses.  We also worked on some partner poses; this week we tried out back to back mirror.  This activity, develops breath and body awareness, as they try and sync their movement and breath.  

The older kids welcomed Tomas back and are grateful that he is feeling better.  We are working on incorporating mini flow routines at the start of every class.  The Monday class flow routine incorporated various plank positions, ask you child to show you their favourite plank.  Here are some pictures of them doing their favourite plank pose and some of them getting creative and trying to do a partner side plank.

The older kids also had a lot of fun exploring partner poses, this week, we did seated twists, back to back mirror, forest of trees and straddle. We have also been working on various gratitude exercises, ask your child to show you how to play the "Orange you grateful" game.  

I am grateful that I can share the joy of Yoga with kids and for their smiles and enthusiasm that makes teaching Yoga so much fun!

Home Activity: As a family establish your own routine to practice gratefulness, studies prove that when we express gratitude it creates a lasting sense of happiness. Here is one such article that explains how, and offers ways you can incorporate this philosophy in your life.

http://www.foodrevolution.org/blog/gratitude/

Imagination, Affirmations and Mindful Movements

This was a fun week, with the younger kids I focused on developing breath awareness and using the What I can See, I Can Be book as a visual guide for our yoga poses.   It was so much fun using our imagination and turning ourself into a still mountain, then a volcano, a tree, a dog, a snake, a mouse, a kite, a boat and a peaceful meadow.  I am very proud to see our young yogis give it their best and smile while holding their poses:)  As a special treat on Wednesday, we also had time to play a fun game Duck Duck goose with a Yoga twist.  We ended our classes with relaxation where they usually center their breath and calm their minds by colouring one of the poses they learned in class and then transitioning into quiet relaxation either lying down or sitting in easy pose.  On Monday, we sang along to a positive affirmation song and felt beautiful, bountiful and blissful at the end of it.  Affirmations are a great way to instill positive thoughts in a child, and work on building their sense of self, and what better way than songs to affirm these positive thoughts!

Hissing like Snakes!

The older kids continue to challenge themselves with short yoga flows while building body awareness. Last week, we talked about 2 types of bones in our leg (tibia and femur) and this week I introduced 2 bones in our arms (ulna and humerus).  Understanding our anatomy, allows the kids to start connecting with various parts of their body as they perform each pose, and thereby embark upon the journey of mind and body connection.
They have also been shown various partner poses; I find these work very well in helping them build awareness of another person and also fostering the spirit of co-operation.  Below are some pictures taken from a previous class showing partner downward dog pose.  Ask your child to show you some of the back-to back poses we learned in class this week.

Partner Downward Dog

Announcement:  On Wednesday, we welcomed Mrs. L, a Yoga teacher and a colleague of mine, who will be joining us occasionally during our Yoga classes.

Yoga at Home:  During class, I have introduced the idea of using our breath, to let go of worries or not so good thoughts.  Trying this out at bedtime works very well, ask your child to lie down on their backs, think about a worry they may have had as they inhale and release that worry as they exhale.
With the older kids we are using visualization and have been filling each worry into a balloon and then releasing the balloon and letting go of our worry.  I usually ask the kids to make a long "haah" sound as they exhale their worries/release their balloon.  With the younger kids I ask them to go into mouse pose and exhale the worries that are trapped in their head into the earth.  Feel free to give any of these methods a try and please do share your experiences on my blog.

New session and new friends

Today, we started our November session and it was a pleasure to see everyone and also welcome some new friends to our class.  We also welcomed our friend Mr. Bonesy, who will be educating the kids on various bones in our body and thereby helping them become aware of the different bones we end up using during various yoga poses.

With the younger kids we played the name game and practised various poses that started with the first letter in their name.  We certainly had a lot of fun doing our poses and each child felt very special at the end of our game.

With the older kids, I introduced the femur and tibia and we reminded ourselves of positioning both these bones safely when doing our poses.  I challenged them with a Yoga flow routine and I was so happy to see how well they are progressing.  Tomas shared how he used his breath to calm himself down, when he went trick or treating and saw something that scared him.  Always grateful to see kids take their learnings from Yoga and put them into action.

Suggested Activity:  Increase your child's awareness of their body, by identifying some of the commonly used bones, clavicle, tibia etc and make it into a game.  Shout out an activity such as walking and then your child would list the bones they use to perform that.