The ABC's of Australian Animals: An Interactive Kids Yoga Book Paperback – September 5, 2013

The pictures are beautiful. I love the animals chosen and yoga poses that correspond to each.

Great book

As a homeschooler, I'm always looking for ways to get my kids moving. I actively seek out products and resources that make them focus on making their bodies strong and healthy. But my kids are already extremely active on their own, so a product that slows them down and helps them find a teensy bit of inner peace is like gold for me.The ABC's of Australian Animals is a fun interactive Yoga book for kids. Each page focuses on a different letter of the alphabet and includes an Australian animal whose name begins with that letter, and a yoga pose for your child to try. The illustrations are lovely.Some days we go through the book randomly trying to do the poses. Other days, I have the kids do one of the poses whenever they need a mental break during school.To make things easy on us (the readers), the author - Giselle Shardlow - has listed all the poses together in case we want to run through them all without going through the whole book. I've been toying with the idea of starting off our mornings going through all the poses to prepare us for learning.I also like that there is a Parent-Teacher Guide included in the back. It gives helpful tips like carefully choosing complementary music to make the moment more inviting and relaxing, or developing breath awareness by having your child practice inhaling and exhaling in a "light-hearted way."Although I think this book is targeted toward preschoolers and kindergartners who are learning the alphabet, my older kids in 2nd and 4th have enjoyed looking through the book and practicing the poses.

We love the unique and creative way that Giselle has incorporated Australian Animals into yoga poses. My daughter loves trying to pronounce the names as she does the poses. With the ABC theme; we can easily practice her letters in a fun and interactive way that she enjoys. After receiving this book and reading through it a few times; it sparked my daughter's interest in Australian. This book is an awesome yoga book on its own, but it also is a great introduction to geography, nature study and the alphabet. Giselle's books all have these underlying themes that draw us back to them time and time again.

Australia is blessed with some really unusual animals and this book highlights them well.Each page represents a letter of the alphabet and describes and illustrates an Australian scene where an animal starting with that letter might live. And in this way "A Magpie nesting in a banksia tree", is so much more informative and interesting than just the word Magpie alone.My three year old daughter and I love animals and go to an Ausralian zoo every other week or so. I must admit a bit of motherly pride when she turned to the letter "Q" page and said "That's a quoll next to a cave. Actually it looks more like a den."Each letter / animal is accompanied by an illustrated suggested yoga pose, but I love that Giselle suggests to "please also encourage your children to use their imagination to act out the animals. Embrace their creativity". This book is about introducing yoga concepts, rather than a formal yoga class. It's a good first look at yoga as there's no need for kids to follow any particular yoga sequence such as you might in a more advanced kids yoga class.

Here's what I love about the book:* Love the nice bright illustrations at the top of each page! I like that the animals and scenery are more prominent on each page yet the letter is still easy to spot.* Love the larger font & larger pose illustration at the bottom each page. Additional details about the poses are provided in the back of the book.* It's a fun way to learn the names of Australian wildlife. Some are familiar (crocodile, whale, jellyfish, koala, etc...) but most would be new to those of us who do not live in that part of the world (brolga, echidna, goanna, numbat, quoll, etc...).* The Kids Yoga Stories Guide section included at the end of every book is full of great tips for setting up a fun & safe yoga storytime for kids. This is one of the extra features that makes Giselle's books stand out.* A great new feature in this book is a free coloring page from Luke's A to Z of Australian Animals: an Alphabet Coloring Book included at the end!Angela Moorad, MS, CCC-SLP, IAYT, RCYP-2Speech-Language PathologistFounder of OMazing Kids, LLC - inclusive wellness activities for kids of all abilitiesFacebook: OMazingKidsYoga

Giselle Shardlow's The ABC's of Australian Animals is my new favorite ABC book for kids! Each colorful page includes an Australian animal, many of which were new to me, and a corresponding yoga pose. This book is so fun to read to kids because they are learning and moving at the same time!As a kids yoga instructor, I find Giselle's Kids Yoga Stories invaluable. Her book is fun, the pictures are colorful, and each page has a corresponding yoga pose, making it really easy to use in a children's yoga class . If you are a parent, you will love keeping your kids active and healthy while reading them a story. The book includes a guide for parents and teachers that gives tips on using yoga with kids. Thank you, Giselle, for another great kids yoga resource!Carolyn ClarkeKidsYoga101.com

Just finished reading through the new book “The ABC’s of Australian Animals” with my 5 year old son. He and I did all the poses as we read through it. We had a great time and my little guy made up some of his own poses along the way. He was just so excited about the letters of the alphabet that he found on each page. He sounded out the letter sounds and loved the new animals he had never seen before. He likened the Australian animals to some we find in the US. The pictures were very colorful and exciting to him and he loved to see the poses demonstrated on each page. We love to play games in my 2-5 year old classes and the ABC’s would be a great learning experience as well. We absolutely LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the book and we look forward to future books by Kids Yoga Stories.

This is a lovely book, it will be very useful when I reach my children's yoga class

Bought for Australia Day at a nursery and the children loved it