What a week, friends! With all of the negativity and sad news that sometimes surrounds us in the media, it is definitely a great thing when something uplifting and good like Yoga with Kids can reach others. There is definitely hope for a positive future.
If you are looking for ways to effectively teach yoga to children and increase their mindfulness, self-confidence, stress management, and self-control, Go Go Yoga for Kids: Yoga Lessons for Children provides all the tools and resources you will need. Parents, teachers, children’s yoga instructors, counselors, and health care professionals will find this guide introduces yoga to children at a whole new level.
Breathing exercises that can help kids become calm and relaxed
Over 150 fun and creative yoga games, activities, and challenges for all ages
Kids yoga lesson planning guides and templates
35 ready-to-use unique yoga lesson plans that engage kids from the start
The best yoga props and how to easily use them with children
Ways to build mindfulness through meditation and mantras
Yoga pose illustrations
Suggestions of read-aloud books and ways to incorporate yoga and movement
Quick and Easy No-Time-To-Plan Kids Yoga Lesson Plans
Downloadable yoga bingo cards
This book details everything in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format that will help you successfully teach yoga to kids of all ages. Go Go Yoga for Kids: Yoga Lessons for Children is the resource you will need to inspire children in life-long healthy ways.
This is the biggest early childhood event of the year and I can’t wait to be a part of it.
I will be presenting on How to Easily Incorporate Yoga in Your Preschool Classroom with Poses, Games, and Mindfulness Within Your Existing Curriculum.
Get ready to learn how to effectively use yoga with young children through a variety of methods in an early childhood session. This engaging and interactive session is designed for teachers, child care providers, counselors, and those who want to learn the best strategies to get young children involved with yoga in kid-friendly ways.
You will learn characteristics of this 2-6 year old age group and why now is the best time to introduce them to yoga. This session will include breathing and calming exercises that really work with these young children to help them focus and ease anxiety, stress or nervousness. These exercises can be used at school or home.
Discover which yoga poses work best for this young age group. Learn how to easily incorporate these poses into your regular classroom schedule. Get proven classroom transition tips to help children move easily and quietly from one activity to another.
Learn cooperative games that allow children to practice yoga poses, build strength, flexibility, and practice self-control while having fun. These games are perfect to play with any size space and require few props or materials.
Handouts will be given including an illustrated yoga pose guide, lesson plans, and resources.
I can’t wait. It promises to be an amazing event. I would love to see you there.
Find out more information or see ticket prices see here. Take advantage of a discount by ordering 5 or more.
Affirmations and mantras can be an important tool to help children develop positive foundations on which to grow. A positive self-belief system built in childhood will hopefully stay with a person throughout their life. While attending the National Kids Yoga Conference, I got the pleasure of meeting Erin Hurley, an elementary school guidance counselor from Virginia. Erin was also named “School Counselor of the Year” for her school district.
She is the kind of guidance counselor that any of you would love to have your children work with and learn from. Erin has a kind and creative spirit and truly cares about children. Plus she definitely understands the importance of introducing yoga and mindfulness to children so they will have these skills for life.
Erin shared with me how she uses the Kids Yoga Challenge Pose Cards when she works with students in her elementary classrooms. She has loved using these pose cards with her students as they are visual, age-appropriate, and include simple yet memorable mantras.
Each yoga pose card has a corresponding empowering mantras for success such as “I am strong” or “I am fair and equal.” This ensures that the students are not only receiving the health benefits of each pose, but also the mental and mindfulness benefits as well.
Erin shared with me one incredible activity and lesson plan that she did with her students that I wanted to pass along. This lesson could be done anytime throughout the school year, but would tie in nicely with the beginning of the school year, Thanksgiving or a kindness theme.
Mantras and Mindfulness Kids Yoga Lesson Plan
This lesson would work well with children ages 5-11.
First, brainstorm with the students about positive qualities that they see in themselves. For example being kind, honest, hardworking, caring, strong, etc. Write these qualities on the board.
Next, the students took the “hand template” and wrote qualities that described themselves. They did this by writing around the hand template.
Finally, the students were able to put the yoga poses and mantras for success together to practice and perform. This absolutely made the lesson even more memorable as it ties together so many different types of student learning such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning.
Go Go Yoga for Kids loves all opportunities to bring yoga to children in fun and different ways. Toega is the perfect yoga game to play with all different ages.
What is Toega? It is yoga for your feet! Kids love this simple exercise and it is good for them as well. Feet are often scrunched up all day in shoes and socks, and Toega allows children to stretch their toes and build flexibility.
All you need are some colored pom pom balls and bare feet! It is fun and easy to play.
How to Play Toega
Scatter the pom pom balls on the ground.
Try picking up the colored balls with your toes.
Then place the balls on your yoga mat or another flat surface.
When I play with Toega with kids, I like to change it up a little by having different challenges for the children. Sometimes I will challenge the older to kids to collect balls of the same color or size. Or I will have a time limit to see how many they can gather in 1 minute with their toes.
After the children have gathered up their pom pom balls, I like to bring a connection or close to the activity by having the children sort them in groups or “families”. I leave it open-ended and it is neat to see what they come up with for ideas. They will often sort by size and color, but once in a while I get an expected response and that is lots of fun.
By the way…I just LOVE my new Toega mat that I found here. It just makes it extra fun to play Toega.
I love introducing yoga to children and have been thrilled that Go Go Yoga for Kids has gotten to be a part of many fun family events as well as author events this past year.
I feel uncomfortable just sitting behind a table, and I would much rather interact with the children and introduce them to yoga through a variety of ways.
Often when Go Go Yoga for Kids does an event, I will teach a kids yoga class, or offer mini yoga sessions so the children can get an opportunity to try yoga in a relaxed and fun atmosphere.
This past weekend we had an event at a zoo so I was ready with zoo animal yoga poses and our popular Off the Zoo Kids Yoga Lesson Plan.
A new favorite kids yoga game to play is the Yoga Dice Game. For this game you need a giant dice. I found a fun inexpensive blow up one on Amazon.
Use packing tape or clear tape to attach the poses to the dice.
I also printed out labels for the poses. This step isn’t necessary as the pose cards already have the names of the poses on them.
Each player takes a turn to roll the dice. Whatever pose comes up, the player does that pose.
Continue rolling the dice until all of the poses are mastered.
See another fun way to play the Kids Yoga Dice Game here.
For the Zoo Kids Yoga Event, I had animal stickers to give the children when they tried the pose. It is not necessary, however, as the kids just had fun rolling the giant dice.
I also love that you can continue changing the poses on the dice so the game continues to be fresh and fun. It also works great for all ages. Have fun playing the Yoga Dice Game!
