Yoga for Emergent Literacy 135comprehensive wellness activities, including an extensive list of
books suitable for yoga with children.
Children often desire to read books numerous times. Multiple
readings of the same book allow children to gain familiarity
with the vocabulary and concepts in the story while gaining
confidence in their emergent literacy skills ( Justice and Pence
2005). As noted in Chapter 3, children learn new skills through
repetition, which is beneficial for all children including those with
neurodevelopmental disabilities. Yoga classes for young children
frequently involve routines, such as consistently beginning with
an adapted sun salutation or concluding with a farewell song,
such as “Namaste.” Children with ASD, in particular, thrive in the
context of routines. In yoga classes, the adult can read the same
book multiple times to children who will benefit from repeated
exposure to the vocabulary and concepts presented in the story.
While reading the story, the adult can pause in specific places so
that the children can fill in familiar words or phrases, providing
them with the opportunity to express the particular lexical items
they previously learned. This opportunity to practice a word or
phrase is especially beneficial to children with expressive language
disorders. Both typically developing children and those with
neurodevelopmental disabilities can participate in literacy events
in other ways, such as by opening the book and turning the pages.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, flexibility is an important
characteristic of children’s yoga classes. One way to be flexible
is to allow children to make choices when possible. In terms of
emergent literacy, children can choose between two (or more)
books they would like to read. Children can also choose which
pose(s) or breathing exercise(s) to practice. For example, when
reading Over in the Meadow by Olive A. Wadsworth and Ezra
Jack Keats, children can choose between practicing lizard, fish, or
frog pose.