by Kathe Hudson
Certified Storytime Yoga® for Kids Teacher and Librarian
Aloha and welcome to Story and Yoga in the Library! We hope our ideas inspire you to share story and yoga with the children in your life whether you are a parent, librarian, or teacher. The library is an ideal resource for teaching materials; the shelves are stacked, ready for picking.
As a storytelling yoga teacher/librarian we choose stories with a yogic theme, a "Moving-Tale," books that promote courage, compassion, contentment, and creativity. We mix this up with yoga, music, and song, along with other fun-filled activities. May you enjoy the moments you spend with the children in your life!
Children receive and process information as they listen, observe, and move. Storytime Yoga offers this opportunity in a unique format. As children listen, literacy skills are enhanced. Children build phonological awareness, hearing the sounds in spoken words, developing the vocabulary.
In our Yoga and Story in the Library sessions, we begin with the telling of a story or the reading of a storybook. Now that kids are back to school, our theme this month is “I Dwell in a Shell” stories of snails, turtles and seashell creatures.
Kids love critters! Many children will have visited the beach and collected seashells, and others helped out with backyard gardening and more than likely discovered a snail or two, so most will be familiar with the theme. There’s a lot here for Storytime Yoga, from the perspective of the natural world to the possibility of looking inward; living in a shell, hiding in a shell, seeking to leave your shell behind, to losing the protection of your shell. You get the idea.
The following is a list of books we used, just a tiny sampling of what’s out there: The Foolish Tortoise by Eric Carle, Snail Trail by Ruth Brown, and Old Shell, New Shell by Helen Ward.
Next we focus on observing and moving. Yoga poses are introduced and images are formed bringing understanding and comprehension to the story. What fun to watch children try tortoise pose! They get to be the snail with child’s pose, then slide into sphinx and wriggle their snail bodies. Arms and legs are strengthened as they move forward and backward like hermit crabs with table-top/crab pose. After a good workout, we end with a relaxation practice.
SCHOOL-AGE KIDS - The Talkative Turtle
For school-age kids this month, we choose The Talkative Turtle, a Jataka tale.
Here is a short summary; the talkative tortoise lives in a pond high on a mountaintop and makes friends with two geese who come to visit year after year. One year, a drought comes and the pond dries up. The birds decide to leave and the tortoise asks to go along. But, how can the tortoise join them since he cannot fly? They talk over a solution to the problem and the geese suggest a plan.
The birds offer to carry the tortoise. He must hold on to a stick with his mouth, and the geese will each take an end. But the geese are troubled; they know it is difficult for their friend to keep his mouth shut. He talks so much! They lift off and you know what happens… an oft-needed reminder that there is a time to talk and a time to keep our mouths shut.
Retell the story with tortoise pose, mountain and eagle pose for the geese. Visiting the pond year after year; triangle and side angle pose are options. Drought comes; child’s pose. Lift off; rise onto knees and drop into camel. With the fall of the tortoise the session ends and everyone lays belly down for prone relaxation. Ahhh!
TEEN AND ADULT YOGA - Story of the Nautilus
A possibility for teen and adult story and yoga that follows the theme “I Dwell in a Shell” might be the Story of the Nautilus. The chambered nautilus lives on the bottom of the deep sea. Over time it builds a spiral shell, but he always lives in the newest chamber. As he moves from the older chambers they fill with substances which assist the nautilus in controlling its buoyancy.
This story helps us to remember that the past is behind us but we can use it to aid us in staying afloat. Living in our most recent chamber is the only place we can be now, in the present moment.
Mahalo, we serve.
Kathe
Storyteller/Yoga teacher/Librarian
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