Meet Buzz. “Buzz is a curious little bee” and he wants to “bee a yogi.” To help him on his way, four friends (Dog, Cow, Cat and Frog) teach him their favourite poses. This is the idea behind Buzz Learns Yoga! by Kami Evans & Jackie Y. Lee, the creative duo who strive to make yoga fun, interactive and meaningful to little yogis. Inspired by her daughter Hannah, Kami Evans became a certified kids yoga instructor with a specialty in yoga for children with special needs. (Read her story.) She founded Elahi Yoga as a way to enrich all lives through creative movement and yoga.

Buzz was launched into the world in Buzz Learns Yoga! There are a number of things I like about this sweet, little book. First it’s short and ideally suited to the attention spans of young children. Second it’s colour rich as each animal/pose has an assigned colour (Cat = Orange, Frog = Green) which reinforces the poses in a visually appealing manner. Third, even though Buzz is the newest kid in yoga class he also has something to teach the more experienced yogis. The lesson ‘that everyone has something to offer’ is one we all need to incorporate into our lives.

The Elahi Yoga Student Workbook is another fab resource for pre-school children. Following the alphabet, animals are used as the basis for yoga inspired movements and poses: B for BEAR, N for NIGHTINGALE, U for UNICORN and 23 others. Each page has an animal to colour, letters to trace to spell the animals name and instructions on how to perform the pose. At the end of the workbook are a number of pages with fill in the blanks and creative drawing & writing to further enrich your little one’s understanding and integration of the concepts and ideas. This is a perfect example of how yoga develops early literacy skills.

Elahi Yoga has provided three sets of books (one Buzz Learns Yoga! + one Elahi Yoga Student Workbook) for this giveaway. Leave a comment below stating your child’s fave animal yoga pose to enter to win.

Since you’ll want to enter more than once, additional entries can by made by:

• Liking Elahi Yoga on Facebook – comment here once you do this
• Posting a photo of your child practicing their fave animal yoga pose on the Yogainmyschool.com Facebook page
• Sharing this contest on Facebook with an @yogainmyschool.com link
• Tweeting about the contest with an @DonnaKFreeman mention

Contest ends on Friday, August 26th, 2011 at 9:00 pm MDT. Winners will be contacted by e-mail and will have 48 hours to claim their prize. Winners names will be listed here, on Facebook & Twitter. GOOD LUCK!

To purchase copies of these resources visit Amazon (Buzz/workbook) or Barnes & Nobles (Buzz/workbook) online.

Disclosure: Elahi Yoga generously provided copies of Buzz Learns Yoga! and the Elahi Yoga Student Workbook for this review. All views are expressly my own and I am in no way compensated for this review and giveaway.

UPDATE: Congratulations to our winners: Anita Kaiser, Eve Agush and Sarah Womer. Thanks to everyone for your fab comments, photos and tweets. It’s always such fun doing a give-away and seeing everyone’s participation.

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Dinosaur Yoga

Dinosaur Breath: Inhale through the nose and exhale with a roar! Repeat. Vary the volume, length of exhale/inhale.

Pterodactyl: Sitting or standing use your arms as the wings in Flying Bird Breath: raise your wings as you inhale, exhale and lower your wings. Vary the speed of each part of the breath to glide, swoop and dive through the air. My classes often fly through the space, skimming over the water, diving down mountain cliffs, soaring on the up currents, plunging to grab a prehistoric fish from the lake, etc.

Dinosaur Nest: Have students become dinosaur eggs in a nest, huddled together in child’s pose. Depending on the number of children, feel free to have more than one nest. One child per nest gets to be the Maiasaura mother and take care of the nest, going to collect food and feed the young as they hatch. Alternatively have them hatch out of their nest and imitate baby Maiasaura – this is super cute.

T-Rex: Stand with feet shoulder’s width apart, knees bent, hips extending behind you in chair pose. Bend arms at the elbows close to your sides, hands hanging down with two fingers extended for claws. Growl and hunt for prey trying to imitate the tyrant lizard.

Velociraptor: Come into Warrior III by stepping forward with one foot, lifting the back leg off the ground and leaning forward. While balancing on one leg use your arms to try to catch imaginary dinosaurs. Repeat on the other side.

Triceratops: Sit in horse stance with legs wide apart, bending the knees. Make your arms into horn shapes by bending the elbows and aiming them forward at an angle, reach the neck long to create three horns and imagine the bony frill.

Brachiosaurus: Version A – stand in mountain pose and reach arms as high as they can to eat leave off the trees. Version B – step into standing splits by placing one foot in front of the other then raising the back leg as high as possible while lowering the hands to the ground and head toward the knee. Use the raised foot as the brachiosaurus’ head to eat with the toes nibbling the leaves off the branches. Repeat on the other side.

Ankylosaurus: Come into Table pose with the hands under the shoulders, knees under the hips. Imagine your back is covered with bony armor. Extend one leg out behind you and gently swing it back and forth using the foot as a club tail. Switch legs and repeat.

Woolly Mammoth: Imitate a woolly mammoth by crossing the arms, keeping the top arm extended to use as the trunk, bend the bottom arm and bring the fist to your chin to create a tusk. Imagine thick shaggy hair and long curly tusks as you slowly cross the frozen tundra and glaciers. Pretend to pick up items off the floor with your trunk.

Dino Stomps: Lift one leg high, say “boom!” as you stomp the foot firmly onto the ground. Repeat alternating legs. This is a lovely way to ground and connect with the earth. Or play Laurie Berkner’s We Are the Dinosaurs while children act out the song.

More Dino Music:

Visit Dinomusic.com.au for lots of fun options.

Game:

Dinosuar Hide ‘n Seek: Have children hide in child’s pose throughout the space. Teacher (or one student in turn) pretends to be T-Rex looking for a meal (keep it fun & light) and dinosaur stomps among the sleeping dinosaurs.

Craft Suggestions:

• Dinosaur Paper Plate Craft from Kids Craft Weekly
• Dinosaur Feet from Activity Village.

Additional Fun:

I fell in love with these cute Dinosaur jokes on book marks to print and give to kids or simply use to have fun with during class.

Much thanks to all those who contributed ideas including Sandi Posey of Enlightened Child, Amy Bevan of The PranaMama, Lisa Flynn of Childlight Yoga, Aruna Kathy Humphrys of Young Yoga Masters and Jennifer Hess of Karmaspot’s Blog. Love it when we collaborate!

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Spider Pose

spider pose

• In partners, one person be the ‘child’ the other be the ‘spider’
• Sit with the spider behind the child
• Sing ‘Teensy, Weensy Spider’ as the spider crawls their fingers up and down the child’s back and the child does the actions to the song
• Switch roles and repeat

Pre-school and Division I (Grades 1-3) love this pose and enjoy taking turns being the spider.

Spider Pose Group Variation

You could also create a spider group pose with the entire class sitting in a row, one in front of the other like a train, all being spiders, except the first child who gets to perform the finger actions for the song. Be prepared for this to lead to an impromptu tickle or two and lots of giggling.

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