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• Less stress and greater success, for all teachers and students.

Using Rumi Yoga for Kids, you will:

• Help all your students learn, regardless of learning style.
• Have fun and feel great sharing Rumi Yoga with your students.
• Manage classroom behaviour challenges gracefully.
• Easily integrate powerful poetry of Rumi and yoga into your curriculum, even if you have no prior yoga experience.

Using Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools, your students will:

• Learn to integrate yoga skills into their daily lives, enhancing learning potential and life skills.
• Have fun learning, and hearing poetry leading to academic success.
• Feel better about themselves, and more connected to their community.

What is Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools?

Rumi Yoga Kids International, the premier yoga program for children, has developed the Tools for Schools program to bring the age-old practice of yoga and healing words of Rumi into the modern-day classroom. The Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools program allows students to encounter poetry and yoga and its many benefits in a fun, engaging, and developmentally appropriate manner. The program successfully integrates across all students curriculum, and does not require either you or your students to have any background in yoga.
Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools is a comprehensive program using poetry and yoga, curriculum integration techniques and character education to accomplish its mission.

• Poetry & Yoga: Students will practice breathing techniques, poses, games, activities, relaxation, characters from the poetry and visualization.
• Curriculum Integration: All basic curriculum areas are addressed, as well as classroom management, test preparation, fitness, and environmental and multicultural education.
• Character Education: Rumi Yoga is traditionally associated with the development of positive traits such as confidence, compassion, respect, tolerance, patience, and nonviolence. The Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools program brings the character education aspects of Rumi Yoga into the foreground.

Goals Objectives and Benefits

• A calm, creative force in the classroom.
• An optimal learning environment.
• Easy integration with core curriculum.
• Methods for implementing character education.
• Environmental education and awareness.
• Innovative health and wellness teaching techniques.

We will examine these features of the Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools program in greater depth in this section, along with goals, objectives and benefits in each area.

A Calm, Creative Force in the Classroom

Goal: Management of Students Classroom Behaviour, Energy, and Attention

Objectives:

• Equip students with simple behaviour management strategies.
• Equip teachers with peaceful strategies for managing classroom behaviour.
• Revitalize students when energy is sluggish.
• Provide Rumi Yoga “Desk Breaks” to improve focus and attention.
• Create appropriate outlets for excessive energy and emotional overload.

Benefits: Imagine… Walking into a classroom full of students. Many are fidgeting, and some are slumped over their desks, while others are staring off into space. “Take 5,” their teacher announces. All at once, the children take a deep breath for 5 seconds and release their breath over 5 seconds. The teacher says, “Let’s do Tree pose,” and for the next 30 seconds, the students stand at their desks, take a moment to focus straight ahead, and lift one leg and both arms into the pose. Their teacher walks them through the pose, using a Rumi Yoga Pose Card as a guide. The students sit back at their desks – calmer, more alert, and focused. Even their postures look better!

An Optimal Learning Environment

Goal: Student Comprehension, Assimilation, and Retention of Material, and Demonstration of Knowledge

Objectives:

• Reduce test anxiety through simple relaxation strategies.
• Improve concentration before testing.
• Relax and de-stress students, clearing the way for improved learning.
• Create an environment where students can focus, learn, and perform successfully.
• Build self-esteem as students realize learning potential without barriers from stress and anxiety.
• Link learning to movement, addressing bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.
• Honour students’ individual learning styles.

Benefits: Imagine… It’s moments before test time. Students are putting away their papers, clearing off their desks, and getting out their pencils. The pre-test tension in the air is palpable. The teacher turns down the lights and the students rest their heads on their desks. A calming story from Rumi’s book or guided visualization through reciting the poetry leads them on an imaginary journey to far-away lands, riding on a fluffy cloud. They visit places related to the information on which they will be tested, to help them recall important facts. As their cloud gently brings them back down to the ground, they lift their heads off the desk and approach their test without anxiety, ready for this opportunity to demonstrate what they really know.

Easy Integration with Core Curriculum

Goal: Integration of Rumi Yoga as a Teaching Tool Across All curriculum

Objectives:

• Link poetry learning to movement, addressing bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.
• Provide information in ways accessible to all multiple intelligences.
• Integrate with Emotional, Physical Education/Health curriculum.
• Integrate with English/Language Arts curriculum.
• Integrate with Mathematics curriculum.
• Integrate with Fine Arts curriculum.
• Integrate with Science curriculum.
• Integrate with Social Studies curriculum.
• Integrate with Music & Poetry curriculum.

Benefits: Imagine… Today’s lesson plan is on the rain forest ecosystem. Students put down their books and move into an open area to learn about the rain forest’s qualities through movement and Rumi yoga -- kinesthetic learning. Their teacher pulls The Great Kapok Tree Lesson Plan from the Nurture Nature category, along with the corresponding pose cards from the Rumi Yoga Box and the students’ rain forest adventure is about to begin. The teacher places the cards on display for the students to see (using the tack-on mat enclosed in the Tools for Schools package). The 30-minute lesson is easy to use and lots of fun! Students become the fauna of the rain forest understory as they slither like snakes, flap like flamingos and float like butterflies. Students create the canopy and emergent layers of the Rain forest by holding hands and raising them as they create a forest of Tree poses. By the time the lesson is complete, the students have learned about the ecosystem, the interdependence of all living things, and much more. Their most urgent question is: “When can we do that again?”

Methods for Implementing Character Education

Goal: Internalization and Practical Application of Character Education

Objectives:

• Use actions and practical examples to teach character education, so students learn to integrate it into their lives.
• Teach tolerance, acceptance, and compassion.
• Promote self-esteem, self-control, and respect for self and others.
• Provide practical, peaceful strategies for conflict resolution.
• Increases awareness of environmental and multi-cultural issues.
• Encourage responsibility for one’s own words and actions.
• Build cooperation and communication skills.
• Highlight additional traits of character, such as gratitude, caring and sharing, etc.

Benefits: Imagine… Tempers are flaring in one area of a classroom. Two students are having a heated debate about how to complete their group’s project. The teacher sees the potential for this conflict to escalate, (sounds like it has already) as other students have now stopped their work and are listening to the argument, and may soon start to take sides. The teacher intervenes; asking the two students to retreat to one corner of the room designated as the Rumi Peace Zone, and find a way to work out their problem. The other students are led through a series of Rumi yoga poses to help shake off the tension from the disagreement, and then some calming breaths to help them refocus on their own projects. After a few minutes, the two students emerge from the corner, where they have practiced some breathing exercises and come up with a compromise they can both accept. The teacher congratulates them on their success, and everyone gets back to work. Order reigns instead of chaos, confidence instead of frustration.

Environmental Education and Awareness

Goal: Appreciation and Understanding of the Environment and our Connection to Nature

Objectives:

• Highlight the connection humans have to all living things.
• Teach respect of the Earth and her inhabitants.
• Encourage students to care for the environment.
• Promote compassionate thoughts and actions.

Benefits: Imagine… A teacher sharing the Tree Pose with the class. Students prepare by standing tall with their feet flat on the ground. “A tree can live for hundreds of years,” the teacher says; then asks, “What holds a tree steady in the ground for so many years?” “Roots!” the students reply. The teacher cues them to imagine they have roots growing into the earth from their feet. The students close their eyes to feel their roots deepening into the ground. When ready, the students open their eyes, raise one leg to create a low branch, and raise both arms upward to create high branches. Focal points around the classroom help them balance and tune out distractions. As they lower their branches and try the pose on the opposite side, the teacher encourages them to create any tree they choose – an apple, orange, or dream tree! After practicing the pose, the class discusses the cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange between humans and trees. This leads into a discussion of deforestation. Many valuable discussions and lessons continue to stem from this one subject, as students learn to see the connections between all living things.

Innovative Health and Wellness Teaching Techniques

Goal: Fitness Fun and Feeling Great

Objectives:

• Improve posture.
• Improve fitness.
• Improve flexibility.
• Improve balance.
• Improve coordination.
• Improve strength.
• Improve digestion.
• Teach students about their bodies and how they work.
• Achieve all of the above objectives in a non-competitive, non-judgmental, non-threatening way.

Benefits: Imagine…Students filing into the gym for Physical Education ready to move and develop their physical skills. The PE teacher chooses several Rumi yoga Poses, or perhaps pulls all the Pose Cards that correspond to a Lesson Plan included in the Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools package. Students find a mat and sit for breathing exercises, Rumi yoga poses and relaxation. One student beams as he balances in the Eagle pose for his teacher’s full count of ten seconds. Another feels strong and powerful in the Warrior pose. A third student is astonished when she is able to touch her forehead to her knees in Peanut Butter and Jelly pose for the first time. All the students enjoy participating in this non-competitive form of activity, reaping benefits beyond what is apparent. They feel calmer and stand taller as they line up after the session to return to their classroom. They even seem to sit taller in their seats the rest of the school day. Periodically, their classroom teacher says, “It’s time for a Desk Break!” The students smile as they stand near their desks, and take a moment to stretch, strengthen, balance, twist or move before returning to their work.

Tools for Schools Scientific Support

Factors Affecting Student Achievement and Related Behaviours
Effectiveness of Teaching Yoga in School
Research Shows Yoga Scores High Grades
Reading, writing and arithmetic just got a lot more fun for kids.

A practice that has seen phenomenal growth among adults, yoga is increasingly being offered at schools because it’s been shown to improve self-esteem, physical health and grade point averages among students.
In one study of kindergarten through eighth-grade students in an inner-city school, researchers from California State University examined the correlation between yoga and academic performance, discipline, attendance and self-esteem. The 2003 study showed a 20 percent increase in the number of students who felt good about themselves and a 6 percent increase in classroom discipline scores, indicating that students who had high participation in yoga class also had fewer referrals or discipline problems. In addition, while the increase in average GPA was not provided, the study showed a “statistically significant” link between yoga participation and better grades.
“It works on many levels,” says Guru Mirumi, creator of the Rumi Yoga Kids upcoming DVD programs and president of Rumi Yoga Kids International. Mirumi hasn’t conducted scientific research herself - but after nearly 20 years bringing yoga to refugee children, he has seen the benefits first-hand. “On a physical level, it develops strength, flexibility and concentration,” he says. “But the main thing it gives children is the feeling of ‘I can do it, and I must.’”
“Rumi Yoga covers the whole gamut,” he continues. “There are breathing and quiet movements with powerful poetry mixed with music, as well as large movements that develop eye-hand coordination and motor skills.”
More importantly, he says, Rumi yoga promotes a way of learning that’s natural for children. “Children are kinesthetic learners - they learn through movement,” he explains. “It’s how they interact with the world. When that element is incorporated, the difference is magnificent. They get it.”

The Role of Sound Nutrition and Physical Activity in Academic Achievement
2004 - Action for Health

Tools for Schools FAQ

How can I teach Rumi yoga when I have never done yoga before?
You don’t need to teach the yoga poses – just focus on the class as the poses are very simple.

What if I am physically unable to do some of the poses?
No problem. The Pose Card instructions and photographs provide enough information for you to cue the children as they move into the poses. Still, you may surprise yourself with the number of poses you can do, and how your abilities will increase with practice, if you chose to do the poses along with the students.

I do not think I have time to do rumi yoga in my class, we are pressed for time as it is!
You can customize the program to fit your individual needs. Students will benefit from as little as a 30-second transition breath, a two-minute desk break, or up to a full 30-minute lesson plan with activities. The possibilities are endless. You may find that when you incorporate rumi yoga into your class time regularly, you actually have more time for academics – because you will spend less time helping students transition from one activity to another and less time managing classroom behaviour issues.

What Is Yoga? What is Rumi Yoga Kids?
The word yoga means union. Yoga is an ancient philosophy and practice that teaches the mind and body to unite and work in harmony to create a more balanced and responsive individual.
A unique element of the Rumi Yoga Kids program is founder guru Mirumi ’s belief in educating the “whole child” with yoga and poetry as a pathway to learning. Using the powerful work of rumi the number one best seller in the world as a foundation, each pose becomes a springboard for integrated learning activities that explore academic subjects such as anatomy, earth sciences, math, language, poetry, music, and art in innovative, playful ways. In Rumi Yoga Kids classes, traditional, “grown-up” yoga poses become age-appropriate poses and activities, frequently incorporating sound and movement, and stimulating creative expression.

Rumi YOGA…

• Improves emotional posture, flexibility, strength, balance, and coordination.
• Encourages positive thinking and a motivation to learn new things.
• Balances the brain through poetry to enhance concentration, focus, creativity, and clarity – supporting academic success.
• Teaches breathing and relaxation techniques that improve respiration, increase energy, and decrease anxiety.
• Fosters self-esteem and self-acceptance.
• Is a non-competitive activity that can be enjoyed by children of all abilities.
• Enables children to know themselves better and learn to trust their instincts.

RUMI YOGA KIDS…

• Honours each child’s unique way of absorbing and integrating information, so all students can learn in the style that suits them best.
• Helps children acknowledge and nurture their special gifts and strengths – from playing sports to playing a musical instrument.
• Allows children to experience fun, playfulness, and collaboration with others as part of the learning process

How Do Rumi Yoga and School Fit Together?
At Rumi Yoga Kids International, we believe that children learn best when stress is low, self-esteem is high, and the environment is motivating and nurturing. The Rumi Yoga Kids philosophy de-emphasizes perfection, rigidity, and competition. In moving through a yoga pose mixed with poetry, the goal is not to attain the perfect form, or compare oneself with others, but to be aware of the feel of the pose in the moment, and to use the pose as a springboard to learning without tension or expectations. Kids who are relaxed and having fun while learning will succeed in school.

The Rumi Yoga Kids Tools for Schools program uses the benefits of yoga and movement to maximize the learning process:

• Partner and group poses require students to work together as a team, creating positive social interaction.
• Balancing poses build focus and concentration.
• Some Rumi yoga exercises can help students relax, calming pre-test jitters.
• Other, more invigorating Rumi yoga techniques are useful for waking up a sluggish mind before class.
• Yoga offers children healthy ways to express their emotions, rather than bottling them up or striking out.
• Slow, even, “belly breaths” short-circuit the fight-or-flight response to stress, and promote a more relaxed, comfortable state.
• A non-competitive yoga atmosphere where everyone can succeed fosters a can-do attitude, confidence, and enthusiasm.
• Yoga can be used to teach concepts and content in science, language arts, social studies, math, music, art, and more.