Storytime Yoga Blog

This morning I taught again at the commerce child care center in Boulder. I used some traditional Japanese storytelling cards, called Kamishibai, to tell stories this time. With a frame, I used a series of illustrated cards telling the story. There is the art and visual element, important for these very young 3 year olds, and it’s very satisfying, even though I insist on the importance of oral storytelling, so that kids can create their own images in their heads. But as an artist, I can’t omit art! So I’ve been incorporating more art work with the telling.

What’s different about the storytelling cards from a book is that you can still be engaging as a storyteller, without reading the text. You can still interact with the audience, yet have a lot of art involved! You can even have children create their own pictures of the stories and use those later for a telling or have them retell that part of the story themselves!

It’s important for the very young to still have modeling of visuals for vocabulary they may not yet have.  The kids really enjoyed it and were engaged. As always afterwards we  did yoga poses, found the place on a map. We used the Japanese story of Momotaro, Peach Boy. It’s similar to the Indonesian version of The Golden Cucumber and countless other stories from all over the world with the similar motif of good against evil. A childless couple get their wish for a child that comes from a peach or a cucumber. The child battles a giant or an ogre and has all the traditional tools of animal helpers and magical objects. It’s great for the kids’ imaginations.

I’ve also noticed how much these 3-5 year olds love moving. Running, jumping, and to coordinate the story with yoga poses is a wonderful way to really get them into their bodies and putting their minds into it. They have to think a bit and coordinate their bodies when doing Eagle pose, garudasana.

They also love the “I’m a little Tea Pot” song in which I use  the pose of Natarajasana. I shake my back leg for the “here’s my handle.” And they shake their front hand that is in the air for “here is my spout.” And we bow over in the position for “Tip me over and pour me out!”  Another way to integrate music!

These little kids can really wear you out, but gosh. I can’t imagine working doing anything else! They are just the most precious things! And of course now in the fifth week I’m getting the hugs when they see me.

Children are so precious. 

Have fun with them and teach them yoga and tell them stories!

love,

sydney 

PS, I just bought an I-phone. I have my 10-year old son play with it for a few days and then give it back to me and teach me how to use it! It’s really amazing this generation gap for computers and technology. I never touched a computer until I was 24 years old! Texting seems so cumbersome to me, yet I am reluctantly joining in the fringe. How simple my child hood was, yet how amazing my kids’ is! I’ve even resigned myself to the fact that my kids don’t read books. They read online, I’ve noticed, and a recent article in the New York Times confirmed this trend. It’s a whole new world out there for them. I believe in finding ways to adapt to the changes, for them and for me! 

I am teaching for eight weeks at the Commerce Child Care center on the NIST site in Boulder. These are all preschool kids, most of them 3 and 4 and one group of 5 year olds. They are a bit above average in energy, so my regular routines, nor my mystery bag of tricks, could keep them still. I decided to scratch everything and make up new stuff!One thing is using rhymes and songs. Children learn through rhyme, rhythm and repetition, the three Rs. I’ve been using a lot of nonsense poetry and rhyming stories that the children love and laugh to.I always love using props, and with little children they are really essential. I have this little wooden toy of little chickens feeding that I picked up in Mexico this winter. It’s really cute and I love collecting things like this! But as I used the toy I said, “What are these?” And they replied, “chickens.” “WHat do chickens say?” and they all go “Bawk, bawk bawk!” (Working with children is so darn delightfully fun!”  I told them in Spanish they say, “pio, pio, pio!” and they practiced that a bit. Then I played the toy and sang the traditional Mexican song of Los Pollitos and told them to join in when they heard “pio, pio, pio.” I tell them that chicken in Spanish is pollo, and that a little chicken is a pollito. Los pollitos dicen, pio pio pio, cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frio, pio, pio, pio. Pio, pio, pio.The little chicken say, pio, pio, pio, when they are hungry and when they are cold.   After singing it a few times we do the chicken pose. It is the eagle pose, garduasana. I break it down into very slow segments. And the kids just do what they can and have fun! We have the beak and go, “Bawk, bawk, bawk! and pio pio pio!” And then they run around the room. gads! The other teachers tell me that all of them have trouble with kids running around the room. Whew! However, still when I tell one of my oral stories, every child, no matter how wiggly and high energy that you have a hard time keeping still, is focused and listening to me and still. It’s magic. That inner magic that stories bring. That’s the yoga! Love and Peace,Sydney Solis 

Story Corps is in Denver this week. Last week I had the privilege of helping kick off the wonderful traveling van that records the stories of ordinary Americans. I told along with other many wonderful Rocky Mountain storytellers. Inspired by the stories that have been playing on Colorado Public Radio, this time I didn’t rehearse or practice my story in the spirit of just telling the story. We don’t need to be polished in our storytelling when we let out the power of our own personal stories. The stories themselves take care of everything. We need only be the vehicle for the words.The story I told was called Sambal Badjak. It is the story of my father, growing up in the Dutch East Indies before World War II broke out, and how his father died in a forced labor Mitzubishi tin mine outside of Tokyo as a POW. It tells the story about how he survived terrible torture in concentration camps as a child, and how certain red peppers, which make up the Indonesian chutney Sambal Badjak, helped him survive. I told this story and said that these stories were told to me around the dinner table when I was young. I realized Sambal Badjak represented to me what must survive. War stories must always survive. My father’s story must always survive. Telling stories of our ancestors and history must survive. So that we can remember just how obscene war is. How much of a death cult it is and how much it destroys children and countless lives. I tell my father’s story to tell everyone that we must never forget, so that we can say never again.I urge you to read my father’s complete story online in the Lotus. You too can be a voice for peace in the world. Peace is Life. War is Death.http://www.storytimeyoga.com/lotus/personal_storytelling/father.htm Help stop this and all heinous wars. Tell your story. Tell personal stories to your children. Stories have this amazing power to heal, connect and promote world peace.Namaste,Sydney  

The title of the Telluride Kids’ Yoga Fest is “Be Your Own Hero.” I told the group of 6-12 year old kids the Native American story of Jumping Mouse. The children are spellbound as usual, listening intently to this tale of a mouse who is transformed into an eagle. Enduring hardship to follow his vision of the sacred mountains, the little mouse sacrifices himself on the ultimate journey.Children re-enacted the story with yoga. Embodying the hero’s journey and becoming the mouse on his adventures. Afterwards they created the art project again. Using the rigid wrap to make a figure as a yoga pose. What I thought was most interesting was what children came up with after the experience of the yoga pose. During shavasana, I had mentioned that it’s like a little death. Jumping Mouse died, and here you lie in the same way. When you get up, you will be not the same person as when you first lay down. Several of the girls thought this was hilarious. One of the laughing girls in the art class made a mermaid in corpse pose. Somehow this idea of death and transformation affected her, even on an unconscious level. (I never cut out death in stories for children.) Also what was interesting was the process of what they started out with and what came up. We talked about sacrifice, letting go of ideas and seeing how things evolve in process. One girl with a rich imagination came up with a mouse with two tails doing the warrior pose. Another girl chose upward boat pose that we used to embody the river in the story as her sculpture. (it was beautiful because during shavasana in the asana part of class, we had the door open and just listened to the sound of the river.)What I loved most about working with Michelle and Tisha in this project, as well as the volunteer teens, is how much fun it is to work with children. We could be with the serious adults practicing some serious yoga elsewhere in the festival, but we were here. Playful, imaginative, doing storytelling, art, asana and more. I can’t imagine doing anything else! What a world we would have if everybody took the time to pay attention to children and teach them. Truly they are a joy and that’s what life is about.It was also interesting that they came from so far away! Portugal, Maui, Tuscon, Boston, California. Tomorrow is the final day! On the family front, my husband drove the French exchange student and our four kids to Mesa Verde. As usual, our kids could care less. We took them to Mexico to see the ruins last Christmas break. Never again! They couldn’t care less. If you take your child abroad for vacation, I think you are insane. Kids don’t know the difference from a Mexican beach and the indoor pool at the Comfort Inn down the street from your own house.  Love,Sydney