Child's Pose
A few weeks back the Preschool teachers attended a wonderful workshop called Yoga in the Classroom: A Guide for Early Educators through an organization called Maine Yoga Kids. We explored how to effectively introduce yoga to young students and maintain a peaceful classroom through doing so. Our team brought back some excellent tips and ideas.
“Let’s start our morning with some yoga stretches,” a teacher informed our preschoolers the following day. “Let’s pretend we are ice cream cones.” The children giggled with excitement. “Stand up tall, like a strong ice cream cone…now let’s use our arms to scoop some ice cream.” The children stood tall on their tippy toes and stretched their arms, pretending to fill their cones with giant scoops of their favorite flavored ice cream. “Now the sun is coming out…what happens to ice cream when it’s in the sun?” the teacher asked. “It MELTS!!” the children exclaimed. We used our hands to pretend the ice cream was slowly melting down our cones all the way down to the floor into a puddle. We concluded our yoga practice by kneeling in Child’s Pose, resting our stomachs on our thighs and placing our heads on our hands. We paused to take a few deep breaths and proceeded with our usual morning circle. It was a particularly focused and peaceful morning.
“Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.”
-Maria Montessori
