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Chapter 9
YOGA FOR EMERGENT LITERACY
You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild,
to pick up a book and read to a child.
Anita MerinaIntroduction to emergent literacy
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (2004, p.13), literacy is “the ability to
identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute
using printed and written materials associated with varying
contexts.” Simply put, literacy is the ability to read and write.
Children transition from emergent literacy of the preschool
period to decoding the written word during the school-age years.
In addition to decoding, children eventually learn to read for
meaning ( Justice and Pence 2005). In this chapter, we focus on
the use of yoga to enhance emergent literacy, the earliest period
of children’s learning about written language (Pence Turnbull and
Justice 2017).
From birth until kindergarten, during the emergent literacy
period, children acquire certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes
that are the developmental precursors to reading and writing
(Whitehurst and Lonigan 1998). Developments in two
interrelated areas, literacy socialization and literacy awareness