3 Yoga Poses to help your 6 year old finish their homework

Boat Pose- Start a homework session with boat pose.  It’s a challenging pose that requires strength and balance by engaging the core muscles.  Sit on your bottom and lift both feet off the ground then both hands. Move your hands side to side like rowing a boat.  Before the pose remember to speak out loud “I can do hard things!” and then hold the pose for a single verse of “Row Row Row your boat”.  It will amp up and focus your child’s energy, setting them up with confidence to tackle all of their assignments!

Wish Candle- Hands come together at heart center while taking several deep breaths in and out.  This pose is perfect for calming down emotions after homework mistakes or frustrations.  After a full day in school, homework in general can be challenging because they are just tapped out! They want to rush and finish; rushing generally produces mistakes.  Wish candle is a great practice to remind the child to slow down. It can also be used as a refocusing tool between subjects. After one assignment is complete practice a few breaths before diving into the next.

Lion Pose- Celebrate each achievement (completing a particularly tough question or finishing up all the assignments) and Roar out your success!  Lion pose is so great for feeling empowered and confident. Sit on the heels of your feet and bring your hands up like lion claws. Stick your tongue out, take a deep breath, and ROAR the breath out. It’s loud and wild and a great way to celebrate getting all of that homework done.  It’ll remind your child of how much they are capable of achieving!

WANT MORE PEACEFUL MORNINGS? CHECK OUT MY FREE GOOD MORNING VIDEO AND START PRACTICING A NEW MORNING ROUTINE NOW!

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How to Fire UP Your Child's Brain

The heat in my part of the library has been broken. So it’s been cold. Like COLD for weeks… I’ve been sitting at my desk with the space heater blowing a wind burn onto my right cheek avoiding any task that takes me away from my one little circle of heat.

I haven’t really wanted to work. I haven’t really been creative. I just sit there drinking my tea as fast as I can before the refrigerator that is my room cools it down to iced tea… I’ve been blaming the cold for my lack of motivation, I actually think it’s my lack of movement that’s been slowing me down. As the room gets colder, I move less…. Ok not less… I DON’T MOVE AT ALL because I don’t want to be away from my space heater.

Movement and motivation/ learning are intrinsically linked. We know that exercise shapes the muscles, heart, lungs, and bones. But it also strengthens the keys areas of the brain (including the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and corpus callosum); it fuels the brain with oxygen AND feeds it neurotrophins that increase the number of connections between neurons. Basically movement/ exercise is essential to continual brain development and optimum health.

NO MOVEMENT= STAGNANT LEARNING AND LOSS OF MOTIVATION
because the brain isn’t getting what it needs to fire up!!
When your child practices yoga and gets moving, they are giving their brain its required fuel!

Children may not understand their desire to move around, wiggle, or express emotions during the learning process (at home or at school) but these are just components of the brain and the body processing together (which is REALLY what we want when learning).

Creating moments of movement in the home and classroom WILL improve behavior and academic performance. But you can’t play tag in the classroom and you can’t always make it to the park. My videos make it easy to add some movement and exercise into your child’s day. Perfect for smart screen classroom use and living rooms, the Bendy Bookworm videos are 10- 15 minutes of active physical participation. They’ll get the movement their brain is craving and you’ll get the benefits of a child’s brain well fed!! Just press play to give your child movement EVERYDAY!

Want a move-to-learn video to practice a morning routine? Watch my NEW FREE video “Good Morning”!

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Lunar New Year Story Time Craft

The Chinese New Year falls on Saturday, January 25, 2020. Do you have a Story Time planned? This New Year’s Dragon is a wonderfully fun and simple craft to add to your classroom or library’s Lunar New Year Celebration. Ideal for ages 6-9 years old to create independently but simple enough for younger children also, with the help of a care-giver.

Materials: 
Paper plate
Scissors 
Washable tempera paint or Crayons
Noisemakers
Hot glue gun
Googly eyes
Craft pom-poms

Step One: 
Make a hole in the center of the paper plate with scissors (use a pencil to round out the circle).  Then paint both the outside and inside of the paper plate.  (if short on time or with a younger group of children, I suggest just coloring both sides with crayons).

Step Two: 
After the paint has dried, glue the googly eyes to two bigger pom-poms before glue-ing them to the paper plate.  Glue two smaller pom-poms for nostrils.

Step Three: 
After the eyes and nostrils have dried, insert the noise maker through the hole.  

Pair your Chinese New Year Dragon with: 
“Nian, The Chinese New Year Dragon” by Virginia Loh- Hagan
“Ruby’s Chinese New Year” by Vickie Lee

HOW is Yoga good for your kid?

You know that yoga is good for your kid.  There’s all these benefits ...stuff about your kid being stronger emotionally, physically, and mentally.  But how?

Yoga’s benefits are subtle changes that happen almost imperceptibly.  It happened in my own practice which started out simply because it felt good.  But has become the root of my lifestyle; inspiring and guiding most of my daily experience.  I’ve watched it work in a similar way in the lives of the toddlers I practice with.

The program lit a fire in them and got them engaging with their bodies and minds.  Watch your child’s yoga practice through the lens of these benefits and you’ll see subtle but persistent evidence of their progress in these skills: 

Focus and Concentration are skills that can be taught and practiced.  Bendy Bookworm Yoga provides multiple opportunities to practice these skills.  By engaging intentional interaction with a story and guided poses to engage their bodies, children are learning that focus happens physically and mentally.  They are given cues and questions to keep them present. You may find your child focusing on picture books at home or in an activity independently for longer and longer stretches of time.

Physical Awareness and Body Control is a skill that will deepen with the practice and become an important relationship as they age.  Yoga teaches how to move in the body; to be deliberate and controlled moving a specific muscle or body part.  Over time this teaches an understanding of the specifics of your individual body; how your body feels and works.  You may find it easier to teach inappropriate behavior (hitting, biting, etc.) with their deeper understanding of their personal body and the control they practice in yoga.  

Encourages Play, Curiosity, and Investigation. As they age, society will begin to press them for results.  Unfortunately our education system measures a child’s ability by their success at tests and grading.  It challenges a child to remain playful, curious, and interested in learning. Yoga reminds them of learning through play; trying new poses and doing their best.  They fall, they giggle, they don’t come anywhere near close to the pose… and none of it matters but it all matters. They are in their bodies and trying. You may find your child trying new things with more curiosity, less attachment to success, and more interested in investigating!  Finding more play in the process.    

Improves Balance, Coordination, and Strength.  A child uses their own body to achieve a yoga pose; as they learn to hold their body for longer periods of time and in different postures, their muscles strengthen and their balance improves.  Over time this body awareness translates into daily experience. You may notice your child falling less (being able to catch their imbalance with more ease), standing taller, able to carry more… all signs their physical health is supporting their growth.  

Confidence is a necessity for a child to grow happy and healthy.  Yoga present the perfect opportunity for them to experience achievement: when practiced regularly the child will continue to get better.  They will notice their own progress as it happens in their body (getting into poses that had been challenging). They are also able to move at their own pace.  There are no “levels” or getting left behind. Yoga will always require practice of the same poses, but their interpretation of the pose will change. This provides children the chance to excel in non-competitive, non-comparison environment, without fear of failure.  No one fails in yoga.

Want to watch yoga lit up your child’s potential? Watch this FREE Good Morning video and move-to-learn TODAY!

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What Early Readers SHOULD be reading!

It’s so important to STOP MOVING YOUR EARLY READER INTO BOOKS written for older children.  Here’s Why-

The thing with early readers is that just because they can read the words DOESN’T mean they understand the content.  I see a lot of parents moving their children into middle-grade novels because the books for their child’s age are “too easy”.  I always try to slow them down. At some point your child WILL know all the words. But the reason Middle Grade novels are challenging isn’t because they are teaching a ton of new words.  It’s because they are:

1. Longer; they require a more mature attention- focus that can follow a much longer storyline.

2. Filled with MIDDLE GRADE CONTENT; they have emotional depth and conflict- your child may not be prepared to understand or handle the story line of a middle grade novel.  YOU MAY NOT WANT THEM READING THE MATERIAL IN A MIDDLE GRADE NOVEL.

Just because your child knows the words in older selections does not mean they are prepared for middle-grade novels.  Let them read MORE of age appropriate material. Or …

Want to give your early reader an age appropriate reading challenge?

Your early reader is a developing reader that is progressing faster than they are aging and the books for their age are “too easy”. You don’t want to move them into middle-grade novels, so what do you do? Give them NON-FICTION options.  Non-fiction books are contextually challenging. Because they are fact-driven rather than emotion-driven, they can be harder to follow and harder to engage with.  I often suggest going down a level with choosing a non-fiction book because of the comprehension challenges non fiction presents. So if re-reading or simply reading more still doesn’t feel like enough, start introducing non-fiction to the pile.  It will also give you a better understanding of the different levels in which we can measure a child’s true reading engagement. How do you promote advanced reading with your child?

Shelf Under: Raising Resilient Children

My 3 year old nephew witnessed a car accident outside the front of our house.  It sounded awful. It looked awful. There was a baby in one of the cars. So initially there was a lot of panic and high energy.  But after everyone was moved out of the cars and off the street it was clear that everyone was safe and uninjured. He talked about it endlessly in the weeks that followed. A few weeks later, a delivery truck side-swiped my mom’s car which was parked right outside the front of the house.  Once again, my nephew watched the scene unfold from the window. While he was watching my mom handle the accident, he started to talk about a “white truck”. He was remembering the previous accident. So I began to engage him in story-telling the two accidents to me. Story-telling is an incredible tool for helping toddlers process difficult experiences.  In their developing minds, emotions take precedence to logic. While they are in the early stages of learning rational thinking, emotional influence is VERY much in control. If they are unable to process and integrate the rational with the emotional, they become stuck in the emotional which can morph daily experiences into terrifying memories that may stall them from moving passed it.  Story-telling gives children the tools to integrate overwhelming emotion with logic and therefore process out the scary, difficult, or unhappy experiences they encounter.  

Here’s how it works: 

#1. Allow them to tell the story of the experience (as many times as it takes to process).  This may mean hearing the story for days, weeks, or even months. With each retelling remember to emphasize the logical progression of events, use each retelling to begin to include rational thinking into the emotion of the experience.

#2. Prompt them (only when they need your guidance) to retell the story by adding linear facts.  Guide them with …”and then everyone got out of their cars” Refrain from controlling the narrative, you are simply guiding them through the memory.   

#3. Allow them to pause, skip, and fast forward - DO NOT push them through the parts that are most difficult for them; they will tell those parts as logic begins to integrate with emotion and they feel comfort in the ending.

#4. ALWAYS end with and EMPHASIZE the resolution.

  Here’s Why it works:

Memory and interpretation will focus on the emotional drive of the experience, what we FEEL.  If they felt fear, they will remember the scenario with fear and they may make fear based associations because of the drive of the feeling.  By repeatedly telling the story, adding the facts, and EMPHASIZING the resolution; you will help them integrate logic into the memory, engaging rational thinking with their emotional memory.  They may still feel fear but they will also begin to accept that they weren’t alone, that someone helped, that the car got fixed, etc. And that will begin to work on the memory and adjust the new remembered experienced.  

My nephew still occasionally tells this story every now and then but from the retelling he has learned and added details about mechanics (car doctors), explains that people showed up to help, and that (in these two accident scenarios) no one was hurt.  His rational retelling has peaked his curiosity about “car doctors” that fixed the broken cars. Mechanics are now important characters in his playing. I’m sure there is still fear wrapped up in the memory but he’s learning that something can be scary and still turn out okay.

Shelf Under: Is your toddler "ignoring" you?

Ok so to be honest, this one took me a little while to grasp:  Toddlers aren’t always intentionally ignoring you, they just don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.  A few years ago my brother in law’s family was visiting and their little 2 year old loved playing with our lab.  But she had a tendency to pull his tail. Over and over someone would say, “Don’t pull his tail.” And she’d smile and walk right over and pull his tail.  Finally (much longer than it should have taken one of the six adults in the room), her father thought to attach meaning to the word tail by pointing and explaining what the heck the dog’s “tail” was.  “This is his tail.” And she never grabbed it again. Adults, in all of our years of developing language and experiences attached to language, often take for granted that we KNOW what a word means. But so much of learning what the word means depends on your engagement and experience with the word.  We know hot because we’ve experiences MANY HOT days, we have taken many HOT showers, we have probably burned ourselves on multiple HOT pans… those experiences have also given depth to our understanding of the word HOT and the different ways it could be applied. Your two year old in their VERY limited experience, who has just began exploring with more freedom, has an incredibly small word bank and an even smaller understanding of the different dimensions of the words in their bank. 
I always begin my story times with a story sequence.  In the early stages of my story times I spoke this story sequence.  Sometimes the children would follow my moves but most of the time I couldn’t really begin to engage them until after the sequence was done and I had brought the picture book out.  I began to realize that they needed context to some of the elements of the story sequence. These children didn’t know what the word “mountain” was but when shown a picture, they could begin to attach the word to the image; they could begin to have an experience with the word.  Once they were able to comprehend what I was saying (prompted by pictures), they were able to engage.
Comprehension promotes engagement.  Try adding context to what you’re asking your toddler to do and see if it helps them to understand, to comprehend, and to further engage with you and their developing word bank. 

Shelf Under: Eliminate the Word Gap

EDUCATIONAL SUCCESS  is directly linked to the number of words heard and learned before a child even enters school!  The word gap between children of different economic classes is super troubling in its implications of a child’s future education.  By 3 years of age, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the wealthiest and those of the poorest. This word gap continues to influence a child as they enter early education, following them through elementary school and beyond.  A child’s vocabulary is based on the unique words they hear and interact with. But here’s the thing we are ALL able to kickstart a child’s vocabulary bank in any interactions you may have (as care-givers, day-care providers, family members, etc.) by intentionally promoting these three easy strategies:  

#1. READ- if you are a parent, a care-giver, a teacher, a librarian... whoever: READ them books… each picture book provides multiple opportunities for learning unique words  

#2. SPEAK- use proper words and begin conversing with the child in infancy; full conversation NOT baby speech.  Encourage comments, questions, thoughts and feelings sharing, etc. And SING!! Melodies such as nursery rhymes and other songs are incredibly useful in developing vocabulary and promoting memorization and learning.  

#3. INTERACT with language- point out objects and their names; whenever possible, provide an example of a new word.  Explain what more complicated words mean. Use facial expressions to help engage and identify.  

Language development is dependent on children experiencing language; share language learning opportunities and maybe, as a community, we can increase every child’s word experience not just those in our own homes….