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Neighbors | Zack Shively.Mallory Wiand and several children sat in the butterfly yoga pose on at the Austintown library's Build a Better You! event.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively .The Build a Better You! event on Aug. 9 had children working on their balancing skills. Participants are pictured balancing a bean bag on their heads to help with their skills.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively.Children learned about a yoga pose at the Austintown library on Aug 9. The yoga program was a first for many of the children who attended the event.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively .Children tried out the dragonfly yoga pose at the Build a Better You! program.
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Neighbors | Zack Shively.Mallory Wiand, leader of the Build a Better You! program, taught children a yoga pose at the on Aug. 9.
by: Zack Shively zshively@vindy.com
The Austintown library hosted a yoga lesson called Build a Better You! for children ages 2-5 on Aug 9.
Librarian Mallory Wiand taught three children yoga lessons. This lesson finished the Build a Better You! series of three monthly lessons over the summer. Wiand said that the library decided to do this program after seeing studies claiming that children who learn and practice yoga at an early age tend to have less problems growing up, such as bullying others. The practice also helps the children build concentration and focus.
During the lesson, Wiand read two books to the trio. Each page of the books showed a different yoga pose that Wiand and the children recreated. The first book used zoo animal poses, such as the eagle and the lion. The second book had insects instead of animals and included poses like the butterfly and the dragonfly. For each pose, Wiand instructed how to do the pose and the children followed her.
Two other exercises broke up the practices from the books. Wiand gave the children a spinner with different colors on it. Each color corresponded with a colored card. The cards had pictures of poses on them that the children performed. They also worked on their balance using bean bags. They placed the bean bags on different parts of their body and tried to balance them without dropping them. They first placed the bean bags on their heads standing still, then on their neck while leaning forward, then on their shoulder standing straight, then lifted their arm and balanced it on their elbow, and finally placed it on their foot and lifted their foot slowly in the air.
The group also sang songs in the middle and at the end of the lesson. They sang songs like “Itsy-Bitsy Spider“ in the middle and closed the lesson with “If You’re Happy and You Know It.“