Kids Yoga ‘What makes you happy’
We have been teaching kids for the past two years and every day is different with kids. I really love doing yoga with the littles. Kids classes are not the easiest or the most relaxing, but what I love about teaching kids’ yoga is putting a fun spin on yoga and bringing it into their lives at such a young age. Yoga teaches them how to breathe and deal with stressors in a healthy way.
This year we added journaling to our kids classes. Each morning before we start the physical practice we encourage the kids to write or draw in their journals. We give them a question or something to think about each morning. Two weeks ago we asked our classes to answer the question, ‘What makes you happy?’
This turned into some fun and exciting answers. They came in two’s or so it seemed. The first two kids said they loved sleeping, the next two said donuts, both answers made so much since. 😊 Then we got a few kids that said yoga, that made Mandy and I swell with pride. All teachers love when their students say that what they are teaching is the best. Really, who doesn’t love that pat on the back? So we came up with an idea to have a Yoga class that would incorporate all the kids favorite things.
We bought donuts and brought them to class. The kids begin by journaling, just like a typical class. Then we started to play ‘Simon says,’ yoga style. This is always a lot of fun and gets all the kids moving. Next, we separated the kids into three groups and gave each group three poses each. They worked together to create a flow and then they took turns presenting it to the class.
After our yoga show, we turned down the lights and put on some stars and some relaxing music. This was the ‘Sleep’ aka savasana part of yoga class that is one of the kid’s favorites. We pulled out their savasana snakes, each student decorated to be their own in one of the classes. The snakes are only taken out during this special quiet time. Most of the kids have named their snakes and really have a special connection that they have associated with being calm.
After a LONG savasana we cleaned up the class and finally we all circled up and enjoyed the amazing donuts.