Play Date: Go with the Flow

Join Boston-based yoga teacher Marlene Boyette for a live family-friendly yoga session on Zoom. Stretch your body and your mind with these easy fun poses and meditative flow. Children and adults are invited to attend together.

Participate in an interactive art-making activity and weave your family narrative of life during quarantine. Reflect individually and work together on a sculptural artwork for your home as we explore ideas of time, sharing, and self-care. Children and adults invited to attend together, ages 5 and up recommended. You’ll want to collect and bring these recommended materials:

• 1 piece of cardboard, at least 8.5” x 11” to create a makeshift loom (1 loom per family/ household)
• Ruler
• Writing utensils: grab some pencils, pens, and markers
• Scissors
• Plenty of yarn, string, twine, or thin rope
• Paper for writing on, at least 1 piece per person
• Found objects that are long, thin and easy to weave. Use what’s around your house or outside! For example: paper with a variety of textures, scrap pieces of fabric, yarn, or thin cardboard. Try to collect materials that are representative of your family’s experience during quarantine. For example on nature walks you may find sticks, flowers, and feathers. In your recycling bin you may find cereal boxes and paper bags. In your kitchen cabinet you may find dried spaghetti or bendy straws!

Join Boston-based theater group and play experts The Gottabees as they lead interactive movement-based activities. Shake it up and get ready to laugh! Children and adults are invited to attend together.

Boston Children’s Museum engages children and families in joyful discovery experiences that instill an appreciation of our world, develop foundational skills, and spark a lifelong love of learning. Throughout the Museum’s closure, we have been providing online resources for children and their caregivers to continue playing and learning from home on a daily basis. During these uncertain times, it is more important than ever to care for and support one another. We are thrilled to co-host the ICA’s Virtual Playdate and provide families with activities that encourage care for oneself and for the community. We hope the weekend’s activities and resources will inspire fun, creativity, and connection at home.

“When you take care of your own well-being, it is important that you pay attention to various aspects that make you fulfilled as a person. Boston Children’s Museum encourages activities and ideas for self-care and wellness that focus on five areas of wellness — Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Environmental, and Social. Move your body, express your ideas, make space for rejuvenation, and work with what you have!” –Saki Iwamoto, our Health & Wellness Educator 

bostonchildrensmuseum.org

Marlene Boyette is The Advent School‘s full time Yoga and Mindfulness teacher. She began her personal journey of practicing yoga in 2003, became certified to teach children’s yoga in 2013 and obtained her Trauma Informed 200 E-RYT after training with 4 Corners Yoga + Wellness in Dorchester, in 2016.

As community member and activist at heart, Marlene has founded Leela Yoga & Wellness and co-found of Peace In Boston and Black + Blonde, two initiatives focused on bringing yoga to underserved communities and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion within Boston area wellness spaces.

Marlene has collaborated with various agencies, organizations and programs such as The Boston Public Health Commission, Boston Public Library, The ICA, The Boston Children’s Museum, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Teachers Lounge, Breathe for Change, The Teacher’s Lounge  and is dedicated to using yoga, meditation and overall wellness as catalysts for supporting, building and healing community.

leelayogawellness.com

The Gottabees are a Boston-based ensemble dedicated to creating inspirational, engaging and empowering theater for family audiences. The company is known internationally for uniting simple-but-elegant visual theater with astonishing technique.  They aim to inspire community, connection, and autonomy by providing an outlet for families to giggle, gasp, sigh, and cheer in forty-five minutes or less. The Gottabees’ stories reflect children’s everyday aspirations, concerns and emotional experiences.  Their wordless approach to storytelling removes language barriers and activates different aspects of the audience’s imagination.

Since their founding in 2013, The Gottabees have performed for over 35,000 people, in venues such as the Center for Puppetry Arts (Atlanta, GA), La MaMa E.T.C. (New York City), Detroit Institute of the Arts (Michigan), Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), Izmir International Puppet Days (Turkey), and Casteliers (Montréal). Their work earned a 2017 UNIMA-USA Citation of Excellence.

www.bonnie-duncan.com

Your support helps keeps programs like this – both virtual and in-person – free and accessible in this time of uncertainty. If you are able, please consider becoming a member or making a one-time gift to the ICA Fund.

ICA Kids and Family programs are supported, in part, by Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, the Willow Tree Fund, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Raymond T. & Ann T. Mancini Family Foundation.