Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendour of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well-lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn!

—Kalidasa

Photo of Sunrise at Ulsoor Lake, Bangalore by Swami Stream

I love National Geographic. Always have. Maybe it was because my Dad insisted on having a subscription and keeping every single issue—I think they still have them on shelves in the basement. As a child I would spend hours looking at the amazing photographs and reading about the world and its many wonders.

As a family we also would watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom every Sunday evening and join Marlin Perkins as he traveled around the globe sharing his love of wildlife and the many dramas that unfold in the animal kingdom. And of course, there is World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with their work to sustain nature and save endangered and threathened animals.

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of protecting endangered and threatened species. I figured with all the animal yoga poses it would be natural to mix the two. So when I found these great colouring pages of a variety of precious species  at Kids for Saving Earth I knew it was meant to be.

Read the full article on elephant journal.

The children’s classic The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear is a perfect example of how to combine literature and yoga for learning and fun. It’s easy to see how yoga poses such as eagle pose (owl), cat pose (pussy cat), boat pose (pea-green boat), tree pose (bong-tree), cowpose with pig sounds (Piggy-wig), half moon pose (light of the moon) combine to create a wonderful physical poem which compliments this charming nonsense rhyme. By using yoga with  literature you help children to involve more senses and thereby increase retention by creating and reinforcing neuron pathways in the brain. Besides that – it’s fun.

artwork from Nicola’s Art Room

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Enjoy this wonderful video by master storyteller and children’s yoga expert Sydney Solis as she takes a group through the poem along with the corresponding yoga poses.

For more suggestions on how to use yoga in Language Arts class visit the Yoga Classroom Language Arts page.

The other day I was teaching a kids yoga class and one of the kids accused, “Hey, we’re doing Math!”

Darn it, he caught me. In almost every kids or teens yoga class I teach I tend to sneak in core subjects like math, science, social studies and language arts. For the most part the students are so involved with the poses, the breathing and having fun they don’t realise the basic skills they are applying. It’s kinda like the vegetables I sneak into our family’s marinara sauce – please don’t tell my children it’s good for them.

I was thrilled when I discovered this fun video of algebra symbols done using yoga as an extra credit assignment. The fact that the ladies had a good sense of humour and used Barbies makes it a classic.

See Calculating Area and Pythagorean Theoremfor other ways to incorporate yoga with math classes. When you use yoga during traditional subjects you engage students’ kinesthetic learning abilities and involve more senses. This leads to greater understanding and retention, especially as more and more abstract concepts are introduced in class. This helps students move from concrete to abstract operations with greater ease and according to their individual biological and maturational factors (see Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Stages).  But that’s really enough educational psychology for today.

To see yoga applied across the curriculum visit the Yoga Classroom page.

Yoga during algebra? A good arguement for it in this BT Bite!

It’s great for your breathing, flexibility and stress relief and it isn’t just for grown-ups. Donna Freeman is the founder of YogaInMySchool.com, an innovative program aimed at kids and teens, and she joins Breakfast Television with a few young friends.

Teens are at an ideal age to practice yoga. It helps them de-stress, focus, develop mentally, emotionally and physically, get to know themselves and become all they can be.

Learning about the body is fun! That’s the message Dr Heather Manley, a naturopathic physician based in Hawaii, is sharing with kids, parents and teachers.

Recently Manley sent me a copy of Battle with the Bugs, the second audio story and workbook in the series of Human Body Detectives. Each story takes Marrin and Pearl, characters based upon and voiced by Manley’s daughters, on health mysteries where they are magically transported into the body on an adventure.

With each audio CD comes a workbook full of crosswords, games, puzzles, jokes and stickers. My children immediately gravitated toward the stickers and colouring pages, while I had to gaffaw a few times at the corny jokes.  For example:

• “What do you call a germ who wants to have a good time? A FunGi (a fun guy)“
• “What did the left eye say to the right eye? Between us something smells.” 

I was most impressed that Manley didn’t simplify terminology (how many children’s books do you know that use the word ‘macrophage?’), but provided real information in a kid friendly manner. And don’t be surprised if the adults in the room also learn a thing or two about how the body works. Here is a teaser of the book for your enjoyment.

If you are looking for a fun, creative resource where children are teaching children in an engaging way, you’ll want to get your hands on these great books. They can be found at Human Body Detectives and on Amazon.

I can’t wait for the release of The Heart Pumping Adventure, Marrin and Pearl’s third adventure into the human body, due out this spring.

Dr Heather Manley has generously donated a copy of Battle with the Bugs to one lucky Yoga In My School Reader. Leave a comment below to enter into the draw.

Extra entries:

Email this post to 3 deserving friends and cc: donna@yogainmyschool.com.

Contest runs through April 30, 2010. Good luck.