Rooms Without Books

Photo: thepepperexpress.co.za 

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”         
                              ~Marcus Tullius Cicero

One of my greatest loves has always been reading.  Books are a huge part of my life, whether I am reading one to myself in the quiet of the morning, or presenting an interactive storytelling program to a classroom of children, or writing one of my own.

Books help us learn on many levels. They bring us closer to other people, Faraway Places and to ourselves. I heavily depend on books and storytelling for all of my programming to help bring learning to life.

For as much as we all depend on the internet and all of our useful electronic devices, its so hard for me to imagine my office, my home and a world without books.

I just came across this article below that I wanted to share with you all. Maybe it will inspire you to get involved in some small way.

Queens Library: Peninsula Branch
Photo: libraryjournal.com 

Most of us are aware of the countless losses suffered in NY & NJ in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. At this writing, 2 weeks later, there are still about 150,000 without utilities and looking to secure food, temporary housing, and hundreds of schools have been closed due to damage or power issues.

In an effort to provide some support and learning materials to these families, educators and students who need them, Scholastic Inc. has just announced that they will donate one million books to schools and libraries in NY and NJ affected by Hurricane Sandy. They are partnering with K.I.D.S Children's Charity to help distribute materials to the hardest hit areas.

In addition to books, many teachers also lost lesson plans and other resources collected and developed over many years. Scholastic is also making lesson plans and activities available for these teachers as well.

Read the full article here and find links to resources for children's social and emotional recovery, and learn how you can apply for a book grant, make a donation or request a book grant for someone you know.

Photo: WTNH.com 

If everyone does what they can, even if its just a little bit, we can help with the rebuilding and transition of the libraries and schools that suffered huge losses. Together we can work to ensure there are no rooms left without books.


Do you have another Hurricane Relief resource you would like to share? Please post in the comments section below!

Dandelions

Did you ever notice that no matter how much you pull them, cut them or try to get rid of them, those little yellow flowers overtake lawns, cemeteries, playgrounds, sidewalks & fields every spring? Some call them weeds, however I think there is much to learn from the Dandelion.

I have always had a fondness for Dandelions, picking large bouquets of them in the spring for my mother and teachers. I remember many times as a young child, riding in the car with my grandparents and my grandfather pulling over to the side of the road in front of  huge dandelion fields that were like seas of yellow. He & my grandmother would get out with paper bags and gather the dandelion plants-roots and all-until the bag was full. They looked like they were in heaven. They knew the many secrets & lessons of Dandelions.

Originally from Asia, this resilient, versatile and completely edible plant (from flowers to stem and roots) played an important role as both food and medicine. Arabian & French physicians have used this plant for centuries as a medicine. Dandelions made appearances in Canada with the French in the 1700’s where they were used in salads.

The Spanish brought it to New Mexico for a medicine and food source, they called it 'chicoria'. Germans brought the plant to Pennsylvania in the 1850’s and used it as a spring infusion of nutritional vitamins. The English also brought the plants to America to cure liver illnesses and Native Americans soon started to see benefits from the plants and started to grow them for medicinal use. Dandelions grown in India are used mainly for a remedy for liver problems. Most recently the dandelion root is being grown and exported to Russia for use in medical remedies. Read more about the health benefits of Dandelions here.

My grandmother used to wash the leaves and saute them with olive oil and garlic and serve them as a side dish. They were added to salads along with the beautiful fresh vegetables grown in my grandfather's vegetable garden. The "milk" that oozed out when you picked on was used for mosquito bites and stings and I hear it also can be used to treat acne.

My grandparents were the first people I remember who used food as a medicine. Being brought up on a farm in Pottstown during the depression, and each having 12 or 13 brothers & sisters, the families could not afford to have a doctor call for illnesses, so they used healthy food as a simple, logical way to prevent illnesses. (Many times did I sit, against my will, and eat one of my grandmother's garlicky sauteed vegetable remedies, or a plate of raw scallions with olive oil to "cure" my sniffles. I will say that it did work every time.) Dandelions and other bitter greens were a staple in their food pharmacy.

So I do think of Dandelions as a natural food source, but also as a metaphor for life. The bright yellow that springs up, seemingly overnight, to me, symbolizes resilience, persistence & rebirth. The bright vibrant color , like little suns on the lawn remind me to stay "sunny" and positive. They demonstrate how life does go on when we choose it to, no matter how harsh the winter or how many times we are stepped on, run over, have our heads bitten off, (or whacked off with a golf club-one of my dad's former favorite pastimes ) are uprooted or are cut down. It is still possible to not only survive, but thrive!

When the flowers finally go to seed, we teach our children to "make wishes" and blow them into the air, just as we have done as children, demonstrating that our hopes & dreams are carried by the wind, and will take root and keep growing when the seeds  finally find a place to rest.


I have a beautiful book that I have used for yoga classes called  "The Dandelion Seed".  I highly recommend this book for parents, traditional as well as yoga teachers (for ages 3-10). It is a simple but very profound story about a tiny seed's journey as it is carried through a very big  & dangerous world and about the challenges it must overcome. It is one of my favorites and I use it again and again, with music, art and of course movements. I hope this becomes on of your & your child's favorites too!

~Barbara

Taming Your Toddler

Children are natural explorers and the world is here waiting for them to discover it! Sometimes, when bedtime arrives, children can become very intent on delaying it for as long as possible, much to the frustration of a parent or caretaker. This is when its helpful to set up a bedtime (or nap time) routine to 'tame' the Wild Explorer & ease him or her into sleep.

I received this e-mail last week from a mom:

"Hi Barb,
I was just reading your posts regarding calming toddlers down and was particularly interested in the Starfish Relaxation techniques. I am having a little trouble getting my son to sleep so this might work well.
Also, I think I want to try the "Breathing Ball" for deep breathing. He tends to get frustrated, (thank God not all the time,) and throws things. He knows he should jump on the trampoline, tackle his tackle buddy or take a deep breath... However, the sphere is tangible and portable and he could use the imagery in places other than at home.

I love learning new things!
Thanks!"


Toddlers are dynamic bundles of energy. As a toddler, my daughter used to get wound up before bedtime or nap time too. She was (and is) very inquisitive and thinks she is going to"miss" something! At 11 years old, she still drags out and delays bedtime as much as possible!

What I have found is that the calm (and sleep) will come only after the excess physical energy is released and the active (or overactive) mind is guided to calm down. The key is to do this long enough before, yet close enough to bedtime so that the 'release' is sustained and the 'calm' can take effect.

Some effective ways to release excess energy are jumping on a trampoline, (if you have access to one) playing with thera-putty or heavy work activities.

While it seems counter-intuitive to put a child to work before bed, heavy work activities are known to calm the central nervous system down for the longest period of time (4-6 hours) Heavy work includes anything that combines movement with resistance. Lifting books, shoveling snow, pushing or carrying a laundry basket of toys, carrying a backpack, etc. are all examples of heavy work activities. The idea is to make the items or activity heavy enough to challenge and work the muscles but not so heavy as to frustrate the child or hurt the joints. This can be the start of your bedtime routine up to an hour or two before the "calming" rituals start.

I used to play "Log Roll" with my daughter. I would have her lay on the floor, hands at sides, like a log, and I would push & roll her over a few times and back again. Then, I would lay like a log and have her try and roll me over. I could use my own muscles to vary the amount of force she needed to move me and resist her enough that she would have to push pretty hard to roll me-or, I could let her roll me easily at times by "helping" her. She never knew if I would be a "light log" or a "heavy log" .  She would dig in her little legs and push with all her might when I was "heavy", and sometimes sail over top of me when I was "light". We would both be laughing hard by the end of a 15 minute game. (Laughing, by the way is another-no-its the best way to release muscle tension!)

The added benefit of these activities is that they also help improve balance, respiration and body awareness and this has an overall stabilizing, grounding & calming effect on the body.

After the muscle tension is released, then you can use a story, the "Breathing Ball" or any of the other calming breath & imagery or art techniques to further facilitate & encourage inner quiet to the busy mind and active body.

One of my favorites is the Starfish Imagery. You can guide your child or your students through this until they know the "story" and can guide themselves. Most children can easily relate to and visualize a starfish, resting quietly, in the sand, under the ocean waves. Its also easy for most children to lay down like a starfish-arms out & legs out like a star. (There is even a Starfish art activity to go with the Imagery, so that each child can have their very own Starfish to help remind them when & how to be calm.) You can use some soft music to set the mood and make a deeper association with the calming imagery.

For the wintertime, you can adapt this to be a Snowflake Imagery instead-and the little delicate snowflake floats softly from a cloud, through the air and slowly down to the ground with the other snowflakes (or by itself) and as the sun comes up and shines down on the snowflake, it gets warmer & warmer and then slowly, it melts...

One of the reasons yoga is so calming to the body is because breathing deeply & correctly & moving specific large muscles simultaneously work directly on the central nervous system. This is especially true with children and toddlers. If the process is made fun and engaging, and a regular part of a daily routine, the child learns the techniques in a natural non-threatening way and will eventually self-regulate & apply the methods themselves as they need to.

I like to add stories, fun games, puppets, props, art & imagery activities to Children's Yoga. This helps to keep them engaged, actively moving, focused and, when the time comes, as tame as possible so they can rest and be ready to explore the world another day!

For more information on incorporating movement games & art into children's yoga visit: www.bodylogique.com

Order a "Breathing Ball" here:
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Snowmen At Night

One of the things I love about my work is the inspiring creative people I get to meet, talk with and learn from every day. We all share, use and adapt ideas to what our children or students are working on at the moment. I LOVE the creative ideas and inspirations I get back! I received an e-mail last week from one such inspiring, energetic teacher.

Her name is Margaret Ricciardone & she has been working with children since 2004. She is a yoga teacher at Ridgewood Montessori in Paramus, NJ.

Margaret has also provided yoga programs for several preschools in the Bergen County area, as well as storytime, art, and cooking classes for the Saddle River Cultural Center. It is her mission to share her love of yoga with children in a warm, fun, non-competitive environment.

As a new mother, she participated in "Mommy and me" yoga classes with her two boys and worked as a co-op mom in their preschool, making her realize that working with children is her heart's desire.

Storytelling is an integral part of Margaret's curriculum and the children use their imaginations & bodies to become an active participant in the story. Margaret wrote to me about one way she creativity engaged the children in the story of  "Snowmen At Night"  and it was so awesome that I wanted to share it with you here:


Hi Barbara,

Just have to tell you, it was a fun class yesterday. Thanks so much for your ideas. Here's what we did:
 We opened with the Namaste song from Storytime Yoga. Then we [warned our hands by rubbing] and woke up our eyes, turned on our ears to listen better, etc. We became sprinklers/fountains, watering the grass and it started to get cold and the water turned to snow. Then we were snowflakes gently falling, then became a blizzard and then freezing rain.

I asked them what they liked to do in the snow and that led of course to our "SNOW-GA Adventure"! (I used Music-'Wipeout' to take them through the activities they were telling me). We then became snowmen. Our snowmen slowly melted and we put them back together using happy baby pose and rolling up and down on our backs to form the snowballs. Then we rested with Snowball Breath by imagining a snowball in our bellies getting bigger and bigger until it was big enough to throw. On the exhale we threw them....and they pummeled me with snowballs!

After that, we dusted ourselves off and read "Snowmen At Night". The children then imagined what snowmen did  and  we played a game where we did what we thought our snowmen do at night... dancing around, sledding, skiiing, etc (to the music of "Squirrels in my Pants"!) When I stopped the music, they had to "freeze". I pretended to be shocked that the snowmen were not as I had left them, commenting on each snowman and sometimes trying to move their frozen limbs. They loved it!
For relaxation, we imagined we were snowmen melting in to the yoga mat. To wake back up again we rebuilt ourselves in our minds.

I was going to have them draw their snowmen, but we ran out of time. I'm saving the "Snowflake Dance" for next time. I used coffee filters to make them (using kids scissors that cut jagged/curvy lines) and they can take them home next week.

PS- I was thinking about "The Mitten" story. If you use a bed sheet as the mitten, when the kids are all in the middle, hand them (or they can grab) a piece of the edge and bring it to the middle and up to their chins to look like they're in a mitten. Then they can give a giant sneeze, jump up and let go of their end. The same for a yoga mat - after they roll up, they can 'sneeze' their way out of it.

Thanks again for all the inspiration/ideas. Yesterday was a blast and I can't wait for next week!

Talk to you soon,


Margaret
 

You don't have to be a very experienced "Yogi" to play & move with kids and teach them in this manner. You can find a qualified children's yoga teacher to present a program for you. In the meantime, you can just grab a book and look around for inspiration! Don't just read a story BE a story!

(Thank you so much Margaret for sharing your fantastic ideas with us! : )
 
To contact Margaret about classes or to read more about her you can find her bio  here at Storytime yoga (under "Find a teacher in NJ"):  http://www.storytimeyoga.com/teacher_mRicciardone.html

To order a copy of "Snowmen At Night" click the link.




Contact: barbara@bodylogique.com

Mittens & Snow-ga!

Today I had the pleasure of visiting the Mom's Club in Levittown for some yoga fun! (I have not posted any actual pictures, to comply with the SLBC Mom's Club privacy policy.)

I walked into the community center to 8 very energetic 4-6 year old children (& a few younger siblings) &  for a brief moment, I pondered if they would pay attention & engage in the activities I had planned for them.

As I was putting down my bags, one curious young man (about  2 years old) wandered over to me and started to pull the colorful kid sized mats out of the bag.

I got down on his level and began to talk with him, and suddenly, not wanting to be left out, the others came over to see what we were doing.

"What's that?",  asked one "can I have it?"

"I like the teal one!!" said another (and yes, he actually said "teal"!)

"What are those for?"  asked the third as he was munching on Fish Crackers.

I seized the opportunity to explain (briefly) that these were my yoga mats and asked if they would like to play some games with me on the mats? They all said "Yes" excitedly (thank goodness!)

So thus began my class by putting them to work: "Okay, if you want to play, let's first take off our shoes and put them by the door," (and they did so very quickly & orderly I might add.)

"Now let's all pick up a mat and sit on the floor together so we all can see. " I had them sit in a semi circle in front of me, and (while they were still paying attention) I began the adventure!

We started with "The Om Song" (From the CD "Come Play Yoga!" Thank you Shari From Karma Kids! ) and then used a technique I use to bring focus: we rub our hands to make heat & "wake up" our eyes, (to see better) "turn on" our ears (to listen well) & "find" our voices ( to sing, speak clearly & use nice words to our friends).

"So who likes to play in the snow?" I asked and all of their hands went up! I continued with "What do you like to do in the snow?" and they each, one by one told me their favorite snow activity.

Then, I suggested we did some of those things right now and turning over on our bellies, on our [imaginary] sleds, we went on a "Sow-Ga" adventure right there in that room...we went sledding really, REALLY fast! We stood up carefully [on our imaginary snowboards] & began swooshing up & down & over big hills & deep valleys. We put on our skis, and went skiing cross country, down mountains and around the trees, to the left and right. Then finally, we went ice skating, gracefully balancing steadily on one leg on our 'ponds' . (*The actual yoga poses used were locust, warrior 2, warrior 1, chair and warrior 3.We used "Wipeout" to set the musical mood!)

We were pretty warm and winded after that, so we rested for a minute, using the "Breathing Ball" to calm and quiet our breath, and our beating hearts  then, we were ready for our story.

Since there is still snow on the ground, and more predicted, I selected "The Mitten" (an old folk tale of Russian origin.) For those of you unfamiliar with this story, a young boy, Nickolai, begs his grandmother, 'Baba', to knit him a pair of white mittens. In spite of her warnings that he will lose them and that they will be hard to find in the snow, he insists and she finally knits him a pair.

It isn't long before he has dropped a mitten and goes to look for it. A mole is the first to discover the mitten lying on the snow and crawls inside, followed by a rabbit, and a hedgehog, then an owl, a badger, a fox, a bear and, finally a mouse. As I began to tell it and as this magical story unfolded we became the story, acting out each animal in yoga poses. We even took turns calling out other different animals (not in the story) that may have climbed inside the mitten too. (We did this by each child randomly drawing a plastic animal toy out of a special red velvet "grab bag"!)

The story ends with a tremendous sneeze (they liked that part!)  from one of the animals who's nose was tickled and the mitten flies up in the air & is finally found by the boy.

After our story, came the "Snowflake Dance", a variation of "Freeze Dance" only much more floaty & slow!) I watched as eight beautiful little shimmering snowflakes floated & danced through the air to 'snowffalke'  music (Enya's "Tea House Moon" ) and slowly floated & landed back on the ground, to rest, peacefully & quietly..shhhhh!

We played one last game, "The Bell Game" (instructions found below) before cleaning up our mats and saying goodbye.

I knew the class was a success when one young man boldly walked up to me and stated matter-of-factly that he wanted me to come next time and play with them. I told him I would enjoy that very much. Hopefully, I will be invited back to share another adventure with these wonderful kids!

You don't have to be a master and learn all of the poses at once, or the Sanskrit names for them, to enjoy yoga & movement games with your child or students. The ancient Yogis moved their bodies like the animals and trees & other things they saw in nature. You can start the same way, a little at a time, by simply selecting a book, a favorite story or activity and seeing what types of movements you can come up with. Release the idea of how it "should" be. Embrace your own inner child, play, have fun & just see what unfolds.

The practice of yoga is said to 'bring together' all aspects of ourselves, body, mind and soul & when you motivate, engage, play and move with children  a little bit every day, that is exactly what will happen naturally!

To learn more about children's yoga visit: http://www.bodylogique.com/

To find templates and activity ideas for "The Mitten" click here

** To Play "The Bell Game" all you need is a small brass bell & 2 or more players.

Players begin by sitting on their mats, (or at their desks). Each player then will take a turn to carry the bell carefully (as not to ring it!) and set it down gently  in front of the next player. Play continues until each player has had a turn.

*(I don't "keep score" in this game. The objective is to improve concentration, motor planning, self-control and a steady hand. I keep the kids motivated by saying things like , "Its ok-you are doing great/your best!", or  "Just have fun & do your best!" and  "Keep going, just a little more!", "This is hard work and you guys are really concentrating!" etc.)

I learned this game from my first children's yoga teacher, Shakta Khalsa at Radiant Child Yoga. The kids LOVE this game and ask to play it often.

To find more Sensory & Skill Building Movement  Game Instructions, Click here.

Your feedback is welcome! have you tried this in your classroom or at home with your child? Tell us about it in the comments below.


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