The Grateful Giraffe

I am a special education teacher who works primarily with students who need academic support as well as sensory and/or emotional regulation accommodations. I have been using “Kids yoga Stories” posters that Giselle posts freely and have found that students in grades K-5 gravitate to the beautifully illustrated poses and regularly visit my room where the posters are displayed. Children eagerly practice the poses and then are ready to rejoin their classrooms. Because I have seen such success with these yoga cards and posters, I had to purchase books. I am so glad that I did! “The Grateful Giraffe” is not only a quality resource for introducing and furthering a student’s experience with the regulating effects of yoga poses, but it is truly a literary masterpiece. This story exposes children to alliteration with highly engaging text and beautiful illustrations. I am so excited about my purchase and look forward to adding more titles to my classroom.

K

The Grateful Giraffe

As someone who works in wellbeing and education with early childhood years books like this are really exciting and rare. A great deal of wellbeing related material is talk-based and doesn't get out of the head much. Unless our approaches to wellbeing include our bodies we're missing out on something important. The Grateful Giraffe is really engaging and fun with small children. Whole classes enjoy the quality illustration, the interesting animals and the movements that you can learn as you go. The Grateful Giraffe also helps enhance a child's emotional literacy which really helps them to communicate their experience which is important and hard to do when you're having hard-to-have feelings. That helps children to learn how to self-regulate and to grow in empathy together within a classroom. Great book!

Another well-crafted adventure by Giselle Shardlow, this is a book about emotions that connects feelings, animals, and yoga all together. Through these beautiful illustrations by Valerie Bouthyette, young children learn to identify and validate various feelings, as they are introduced to animals from around the world. My favorite animal, being the “proud peacock.” As always, the connecting yoga poses are highlighted neatly in a circle close by. There is also a guide to each of the poses in the back of the book, along with a parent-teacher guide to maximize learning potential.