Peace Begins With Me

At IJP we do yoga, but not just any kind of yoga... We practice Yoga Yeladim, a fusion of Jewish learning, body awareness and spiritual understanding all rolled up into a yoga mat! Through this practice, your children are becoming more mindful, spatially aware and are gaining physical and mental strength to be carried with him/her for a lifetime. 

So, what exactly do we do in class? First we place our shoes mindfully on our "shmat", the mat we decorated just for our shoes! 

We then do a series of om's, the universal sound.  This unites and grounds us as we begin our daily journey together.  Yoga is not all about movement and poses; meditation is a vital part of yoga and we teach it with mantra's and bells.  Our brains can be so cluttered with thoughts that we practice a few simple ways to keep those thoughts simple. Have you heard our mantra, "Peace begins with me,"? It's actually a meditation!  We can also meditate with sound which really helps us to stay present and focused on one thing: the here and now. See our yogis tuning into the frequencies of the singing bowl and  tingsha bells.

Now it's time for movement!  We generally go from seated to standing using a short story and incorporating traditional yoga poses (sometimes with traditional names, other times we just make the names up as we go!). 

Sun Salutations are a staple in our class as well.  This ensures that we are fully activating our entire bodies while moving from standing, to plank then to down dog, up dog, and back to standing in its most simple form.  Some days we mix it up and add all types of variations.  

What makes our yoga class the MOST FUN?! Our songs of course.  Most of our songs are from Kidding Around Yoga and can be found here. A few of the favorites are: Jogging Through The Jungle, Yoga Negila, Toe-ga, Every Little Cell, and Yummy Yoga. 

Here we are playing Toe-ga, yoga for our toes, an all-time favorite. Once we gather our pom-poms we use them to make a picture or to blow across our mat. 

After all the movement and songs, we make sure to go to our special gardens.  This is a place we can always visit whether we're happy, sad, angry, or feeling any other way, it's always there.

Namaste and Shal-om!

Specialty Activities with Morah India

Every day we head up to the third building for our class's special activity slot with Morah India. She prepares a wide range of activities that touch on different skills. We've done gross motor exercises, cooperation and self-regulation games, and art experiences.

Yoga promoted awareness of our space, our bodies and our breathing.

Working together we shook a parachute, following Morah India's directions of stop and start. 

 We did some stretches and then followed Morah India through an obstacle course.

 

 Art and science were integrated in a tricky activity where we blew droplets of watercolors with straws to watch how they moved. We added drops of different colors to see what happened when the colors mixed together.

More creativity to come next week!

Oh, the places we go... during yoga!

Self discovery through yoga poses can be fun and engaging for preschoolers and adults.  Have you ever closed your eyes and imagined a simple picture? Try it! Some people can do this easily and some may never quite be able to.  We explore our minds and our bodies by mimicking different types of animals, shapes, and vessels but also by imagining a visit to different parts of our city, country, world, and outer space.  

We are strong, brave warriors!

While holding the talking stick, Ari tells the class that she likes it when her friends and her sister share toys with her!

We are tiny seeds! With enough water and sunlight we can grow! 

Look at us sprouting up!  Soon we will be big and tall. 

Here we are as tall trees!  Even if the wind blows hard, we stay strong and standing tall.

Seals make funny sounds and hold their heads up high to balance bright colored balls on top of their noses!  Silly seals! 

Alef - Bet Yoga and Painting with Kitah Alef

 Kitah Alef spent lots of time painting a big canvas hanging on the fence this week. We used bright colors like blue, purple, pink and yellow. We painted with brushes big and small.

 Caleb: "I made a circle!" Evan: "I made a circle too!" Lily: "I made a heart!" When we came back to camp on Thursday we noticed the canvas looked different.

 The colors blended into each other because of the rain on Wednesday. The painting was even more beautiful. Morah Myriam decided it was time for Alef-Bet Yoga. Everyone had great fun trying different poses with their bodies to make the shapes of the Alef-Bet.

 Morah Myriam: "Can you touch your toes? Let's reach for the stars, stretch!"

 Morah: "Everyone make a "Chet" - very good Evan!" Evan made a great Chet with Morah Tangela.

 Making a "Kuf" was not easy. Morah: "Who can balance like this?" Kitah Alef: "We can!"

Lily did a great job balancing to make her "Kuf".

 Ezra pointing to his favorite letter - "Shin" or "Sin" Ezra: "This one!"