Sunday, February 5, 2012

Gym Time Stretching

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop called Storyoga.
Vanessa has created this program that combines animal yoga postures and story books.
I love that she brings stories to life with movement.
I've been gradually including what I learned into our program.
We do 10 minutes of 'yoga' stretching at the end of our daily gym period.
At the sound of a chime the children curl up into a 'seed'.
Also called the mouse pose.
I use a rain stick for the sound
and the grown ups trickle their fingers down their child's back
as the rain falls.
When the rain sound stops we grow into a tree 
and stretch our branches out wide.
The wind may blow and our branches sway back and forth
and sometimes all the way to the ground.
Vanessa has adapted the Sun Salutation routine for children.
She calls it Namaste Mountain.
We call it I Am A Mountain.
Here is a video of one of our stretching sessions.
Thanks Vanessa.

Now that we've been doing this for a couple of weeks,
I've started adding a pose
from this book I was given.
It gives a riddle on one page and the answer on the next.
 
We've been adding a riddle/pose every couple of days.
Unfortunately I'm not as flexible as the children are and on Friday as we were
doing the butterfly pose, a little girl told that she does this at ballet and my knees are suppose to touch 
the floor.
Ouch, I guess I need to do more stretching.



3 comments:

  1. My kids just love our stretching activities - great fun and keeps us limber!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Maureen! I love the tickle stick idea. I'm a Yoga & Creative Movement teacher in private preschools. I often bring a cotton ball for resting pose, and tell the kids to wait until they get their "bunny kiss" (gentle swipe across their nose with the cotton ball) to get up.
    Feel free to use some of my lesson plans and information during your yoga times--see http://www.elovinyoga.com/lfy-blog.html Happy Holidays!
    Elly

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Elly for the idea, I'll check out your site for more.

      Delete