Yo-Yo-Yoga!
Come one, come all! Yoga-time with Johanna has begun!
Those of you who practice or are familiar with yoga, might be wondering what yoga for toddlers and preschoolers could possibly look like. Anyone who wants to witness it first-hand can pop in to Buddings on a Friday morning to see us in action!
Yoga for kids can look like a lot of things – singing, dancing, laughing, stretching, telling stories, barking, crawling, falling over. It really is more like yoga-play than just plain old yoga, and that’s what makes it so great!
For me kids yoga is just another way to have fun with each other, to play, express, and connect.
Every Friday I get to try my ideas out on the Buddings kids, to see what works, and what doesn’t. So far we’ve been focussing on a favourite Budding’s storybook, Bear on a Bike by Stella Blackstone, to bring yoga to life.
Not only do we get to sing about bear’s adventures, we also get to act them out with our bodies. Luckily, bear takes all sorts of different forms of transportation, travelling by bike, train, boat, and rocketship, among others. Some of these are great yoga poses already, and some of them we get to invent and re-create as we go.
And of course, we want bear to have a sunny day for all of his adventures, so we always start things off by doing a sun dance.
At the end of our yoga-time, we’ve inevitably been on a lot of adventures, so we might lie down and rest, or imagine we’re floating in space in the dark, starry sky with bear. This is our opportunity for some quiet-time and relaxation, even if it only lasts for a minute or two.
Although yoga for toddlers and preschoolers looks nothing like yoga for grown-ups, it’s a wonderful way for little ones to move and connect to their bodies.
