Yogi Says, Yoga Dance Party!

Today I had so much fun with the kindergarteners and pre-kers for Story Story Dance! The story of the day is My Daddy is a Pretzel by Baron Baptiste (also listed on the Book Recommendations page). I also used yoga visuals from the Yoga Pretzels Yoga Cards (these cards are great, I incorporate them into these classes whenever I can). After the warm-up, we sat in our story circle and discussed the book cover. Then,  I informed the children that the children in this story share the different jobs their moms and dads have. We then engaged in a discussion about jobs, or occupations and they shared the different jobs they knew or the one's of their parents. My favorite (and the most common answer) was "they work."

Some children did in fact have parents who were "construction workers" an "architect" and "baker," like some of the children in the story. As we read along, we tried some of the poses. During story time,  I limit movements to those we can do on our story mats (no standing activities). While on our story mat for this book, we made tree arms, we made triangles with our hands and fingers, airplane arms, fish faces, made pretzels with our arms by making them twisty, and stuck out our tongues for lion pose.

The next half of the story dance class emphasizes axial (on the spot) and locomotor (through space) movement.  We practiced triangle pose, tree pose, and mountain pose and played a round of "Yogi Says." For our end of class dance party, I busted out my ukulele and we played Yoga Freeze Dance! The is a new instrument for me and I am loving how fun it is to play and how easy it is to tote around (mine is a vibrant green with a sheen).  While I played a tune, the children danced around. When I stopped and held the ukulele up over my head, they got into any yoga pose that we practiced during class. They seemed to have a lot of fun with this and it was interesting to see which poses they chose. For our very last pose, everyone laid down on their backs and pretended to be peaceful rainbows. A great ending.

Today's classes were super fun. Story, children, yoga, and the ukulele go very well together.