Book Review: Yoga Adventures for Little Explorers

If you like yoga and want to introduce it to your kids at home or in the classroom, Yoga Adventures for Little Explorers by Meghan McDougall and illustrated by Hayley Lowe.

The book takes readers through a kid and adult yoga class where the kids imagine being trees in the jungle and mountains by the beach. As they go through the poses, the story gets sillier, featuring a wild pig lounging in the grass, chimps throwing food and watching TV, and gorillas having a dance party.

It all comes back to a restful conclusion at the end of the class (and the book).

This is a fun read that kids will probably want to follow along with and try to do the poses as you read. There are drawings of gorillas along with the Sanskrit and common English name for each pose in the back of the book for reference.

One thing I really liked about this book is that the illustrations show kids of all sizes, shades and skill levels. When the kids do tree pose, for example, some barely lift their foot, or have it just above their ankle in addition to one who looks more like what you’d imagine tree pose to look like. You can see the wobbles as they try to find their balance.

This is an important lesson in yoga and in life, that we all start where we are and it looks different for everyone, but we all try our best.

The book is aimed at listeners in the pre-k to kindergarten range, and it would be a good one to have on hand for a rainy day when you need to get some wiggles and sillies out. Just make sure you don’t skip the calm stuff at the end!

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2025 by Pownal Street Press. Suggested retail price $21.95.

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more.

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource.

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post).

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources.

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom.

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks.

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.

Have you read?

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