Kid’s Yoga and Literacy
Kid’s yoga can be a great way to increase the literacy skills of children. I love to use a children’s book to set the theme for my yoga classes. In addition to improving listening skills and following directions, there are other specific ways that a well designed yoga class can help children to become better readers and writers.
When a child watches and then copies the teacher, or another child doing a yoga pose, they are developing the Spacial Awareness needed for letter recognition and letter reversals. Being able to recognize which way they are facing, right and left sides of the body, and up and down all contribute to better letter recognition. It can also improve visual processing and eye tracking, which is needed for moving the eyes left to right across the page.
Anytime you pair movement with new learning, stronger connections in the brain are made. Pairing Yoga and Reading, like the use of Yoga Cards, or a class pose schedule, can increase vocabulary and comprehension in young learners. As they move and pretend to be animals, items in nature, and other things, they also learn prepositions, such as under, over, through, around, and behind. They learn to move slow, fast, softly, gently, with force, to stretch, stomp, jump, and crawl. All these activities lead to better vocabulary and word recognition.
A good kid’s yoga class also includes rhythm and patterns, which helps with sequencing. Sequencing is important in the building of letters into words, words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs. Clapping patterns are fun to do and reinforce this area of literacy. Using music is an additional way to bring in rhythm and patterns into class. Singing the instructions has a much better effect than just telling kids what to do.
If you are a parent, grandparent, or a kid’s yoga teacher, combining yoga and books is a great way to help your little ones become better readers and have fun at the same time! Check out the list of my favorite yoga books for kid’s on the Young at Heart Yoga for Kids page!