Children Inspired by Yoga with Tatty Bumpkin - Tunbridge Wells

21/01/2026

14/12/2025

13/12/2025

🪘Beat Competency

This week during our classes we have been helping the monkeys rebuild their nest, using our own Monkey song. With a strong beat and off-beats, we've been encouraging the children to listen carefully to the music and class along leaving rests and clapping in double time.

🪘What is beat competency?
We are all born with a beat inside us. So much of what we do concerns beat. We walk in a beat, our hearts beat, we breath in a beat. Language is rhythmic. Words have rhythm.
Being able to maintain a steady beat is called beat competency.

Beat competency is involved in:

🪘clapping along to a beat
🪘bouncing up and down
🪘marching
🪘mimicking what is called out to a beat

🪘Why is beat competency important for learning?
Research has shown that beat competency is important in learning. Professor Reyna Gordon of Vanderbilt University has looked at the link between rhythm and grammar. She has seen (through her research) direct correlations between a good grasp of beat and language development.

A sense of beat is needed to understand the intonation and cadence of language itself. Sometimes this can be lacking in children. They may struggle with beat competency due to many different reasons. This can therefore be detrimental to their learning. The good news is that it can be developed.

As with many things the more you do something, the better you become at it!

Furthermore, there are many opportunities to improve beat competency with children.

Tatty Bumpkin songs involve keeping a beat. Children Inspired by Yoga classes involve visualisation and use the imagination, whilst moving to a beat. This is a fabulous way to build a true sense of rhythm in the mind.

Phil Davis of Write Inspired says:

🪘How to build beat competency at home
Much more could be done in schools beyond the early years. I regularly do simple beat competency activities with children in my work throughout Key Stage 2 and beyond.

Most of all, one of the key benefits of this sort of work is that children love it. It is enjoyable. This is the key factor for engagement, and in turn successful outcomes. Happy people learn.

🪘3 simple things you can do with your child to help develop beat competency
Use a pair of sticks (one pair for every person). Tap out a simple rhythm (even four straight beats). The others then repeat it. Alter the dynamic and see if this can be copied. This simple act of focussing on a beat or rhythm and then repeating it is very useful. Repeat each phrase you do about 3 or 4 times before changing it.
🪘Keep a beat (like a metronome) and chant sentences along to it. The others repeat. The sentences can be anything. Even simple sounds are useful (the vowels for example). Change the tempo of the sounds. For example you could make the ‘a’ sound as in ant, along with 4 beats – a,a,a,a then you could just make one long ‘a’ sound to the four beats. Following this you could do double a sounds to the four beats – aa aa aa aa
🪘Marching and bouncing to a beat. Use the sticks again. Decorate some wooden spoons to make them personal. Tap a simple beat and march along to it. Chant things you see as you walk around. ‘ I can see a flying bird.’ Take it in turns to chant something and then the others repeat it. This is not only developing beat competency and the ability to fit words in to a rhythm but also awareness. Noticing things. Focus. Concentration. All valuable skills for their developing mind.
I hasten to add valuable skills for all of us whatever our age!

I truly believe that the more we have a sense of rhythm in our lives at an early age, the more effective our learning will be.

12/12/2025

🐒This week Tatty Bumpkin has been off on an adventure in the jungle to visit the monkeys. She listened and moved to the beat of the monkey song & used her imagination to explore how to build the monkeys a new nest after the storm. ⛈️⚡

🐒How to do monkey pose
If you feel able to do monkey pose with your child, do give it a try. Research shows that toddlers and young children bond with their parents and ‘key people’ not only through touch and by communicating with them but also by moving with them. However, if you have issues with either your back or hips, please check with a health professional first to make sure that this pose is appropriate for you.

If you are in good health, start monkey pose by finding a space on a carpet or mat. You need an area where you can both safely move and experiment with balancing without being in danger of falling on anything. Take off your shoes and socks. Children under 3 years will use their vision to keep their balance. However from about 4 years old, children increasingly start to use their body senses to balance. Doing monkey pose with bare feet will ensure their brain receives accurate sensory input though the soles of their feet.

Encourage your child to leap from squatting to standing, moving their arms up and down like a monkey – make ‘ooooh’ sounds!

Try reaching up with one hand and then the other to imagine you are hanging from the branches. This activity will give your child a great stretch and help their co-ordination skills as they become aware of their right and left hand sides.

Then reach across your bodies with one hand and then the other as if swinging on vines or passing a banana. To do this activity your child will have to cross the ‘mid line’ of their body, which is necessary for writing.

🐒A more challenging monkey pose
Try balancing on one leg while you imagine being a monkey perched on a high tree branch.

🐒The benefits of monkey pose
Monkey pose gives you a chance to:

🐒Build strength
🐒Leaping from squatting to standing and moving arms up & down in monkey pose will strengthen leg and arm muscles.
🐒Develop balance skills
🐒The movements of monkey pose help to improve balance skills. To progress these further, guide your child to have a go at standing on one leg.
🐒Refines ‘crossing the mid line’ skills
By passing an imaginary banana or ‘swinging from vine to vine’ our children will have to cross the mid line of their bodies.
Crossing the mid-line is an important coordination skill for writing. As Devany LeDrew explains, these types of movements will: “cause their brains to communicate across their Corpus Callosum. This thick cable of nerves allows their two brain hemispheres to communicate. The practice is vital for higher level skills like reading and writing. By moving in new ways, we build and strengthen new pathways in the brain.”
The Corpus Callosum is the part of the mind that allows communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. It is responsible for transmitting neural messages between both the right and left hemispheres. [brain made simple]

03/12/2025

Urgent notice from South East Water - please share as widely as possible...

02/12/2025

What a week already, and it's only Tuesday!
For us here in Tunbridge Wells we've been without water since Saturday. Such a basic commodity that we absolutely take for granted.
At first we seemed to be managing well - we'd collected some bottled water, we changed what we were eating to reduce the water requirements, we were able to wash and brush teeth with the provided water, but it's the toilet flushing that's a killer! All whilst outside, the rain is continuing to fall.... We're now collecting buckets of rainwater to flush toilets as it feels so wasteful using bottled water.
'Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink' comes to mind!
We've certainly become more grateful for the little things that we completely take for granted...
Thankfully for us, the water has returned - but we feel for the ones who are still waiting - especially those with small babies/children or smelly teenagers! Hopefully not too much longer now 🤞
How's everyone faring?

28/11/2025

Pose of the Week - Orange Term Week 4 => 🛶BOAT🛶

This week we have been off exploring with Dog, being creative after finding some bits on the beach with which to make a Boat.
We worked together in pairs to row our boat across the seas.
We had to navigate past the wiggly, giggly Octopus - we gave them a tickle on the way past!
We bravely explored a desert island, finding lots of stone statues of some very random animals!

In Boat pose we:
🛶had fun with our friends and sang together
🛶worked to strengthen our tummy muscles
🛶improved our balance whilst sitting

21/11/2025

Pose of the Week - Orange Term Week 3 => 🦋BUTTERFLY🦋

This week we have been looking at different people's feelings and emotions, talking about how events and other people's actions can affect how we feel.
We decided that the calming movements of butterflies can help us all feel better and more in control of our emotions

In Butterfly pose, we:
🦋improved our balance in sitting, flapping our leg wings out to the side
🦋sat up straight to improve our posture
🦋blew floaty butterflies, which encouraged us to take big, deep breaths, helping us to calm
🦋developed our hand-eye co-ordination by balancing our butterflies on the back of our hand before blowing them to make them fly

14/11/2025

Pose of the Week - Orange Term Week 2 => 🐈‍⬛CAT🐈‍⬛

This week, Tatty Bumpkin has been off visiting to find out what jobs people do, and we squeezed so many developmental areas into the sessions:
When driving the big red bus, we sang 'the wheels on the bus' prompting memory skills and vocabulary, walked on our bottoms requiring concentration, co-ordination and core muscles and glutes.
When helping the farmer prepare his field for sowing seeds, we rolled over and over, which, whilst being great fun is also a complex movement skill, strengthening gross motor skills and promoting bilateral co-ordination between different parts of the body working together. The vestibular sense and inner ear balance are stimulated while aiding sensory motor integration that allows children to perform actions instinctively.
To learn more about the importance of babies and children rolling, and how it can affect their future development both physically and cognitively, see this article: https://parentingall.com/rolling-important-developmental-milestone/ #:~:text=This%20significant%20milestone%20stimulates%20the%20vestibular%20system%20and,between%20different%20parts%20of%20the%20body%20working%20together

On our adventure, we met Tatty Bumpkin's friend CAT, but she dreamed of having adventures instead of actually having them. In CAT pose we:
🐈‍⬛ stretched our back and strengthened our core muscles in Cat pose
🐈‍⬛ worked on balance as we waved our paws in Cat pose
🐈‍⬛ concentrated on actions using both sides of the body, by waving our paw and tail simultaneously

13/11/2025

Today is WORLD KINDNESS DAY

Is there just one little thing you could do today to bring some sunshine to someone?
Even just sharing a smile! 😊


credit: Charlie Mackesy Instagram

11/11/2025