Yoga - For School-Ager's

Last week was a little different. I took half the week off for vacation but, before I left, I presented a program for our school-aged members. Just as a refresher, I am currently assigned to plan/present storytimes for 0-to-5-year-olds. However, my counterpart (in my particular branch) and I trade roles one week a session to keep things fresh and to take a break from our age groups. It's always exciting to do something new. 

For my program, we learned about YOGA!

1. Discussion:

We defined "Yoga", since most of the kids had never done yoga before and, if they had heard of it, only had a vague idea of what yoga is. I told them that "asana" was when you hold your body in a particular position for period of time and that we would be doing a variety of "asana" positions throughout the program.

Then we did a breathing exercise and "Ohm"-ed together. 

2. Reading:

We read the book "You Are a Lion!: And Other Fun Yoga Poses" by Taeeun Yoo. 

In my powerpoint presentation, I had pictures of kids doing the poses. I put out carpets in the room so everyone had room to get down on the floor. We got in each "asana" and I had the kids guess what animal we were, or what the name of the pose was. 

I read the book at the same time. Since scanning some of the pictures worked so well when I did the Zentangling program, I did something similar to reveal what animal/pose we were doing. 

After each pose was revealed to be a different animal, I asked the kids if the pose looked like the animal. If not, what should the pose look like? Everyone was laughing and having a blast, even my teen volunteers.

3. Activity:

I searched for more animal poses on the internet to continue the theme of animal "asana" poses. They had the guess the animal again after we got into the position. Then, I put the animal side-by-side with the pose and we continued in the same vein as the book with the kids telling me what the pose should look like instead.

4. Craft:

Since many yogi's have aromatherapy bags that they place over their eyes during Shavasana, I thought we would make the eye masks. I found a craft online that used socks. So we purchased packs of fun-colored socks. I had some aromatherapy scents at home so I chose the one that smelled like lavender and chamomile.  I put a couple drops of the aromatherapy scent in a bowl of rice, mixed it up, and then we had the teens help the school-agers put rice in their socks. The teens helped them tie the ends and then they were able to decorate their eye pillows with ribbons or markers if they wanted to.