Teaching kids yoga, especially little ones ages 3-7, can be challenging when you factor in attention span limitations, nap times, potty breaks, stranger danger phases, etc. Luckily, my group was very involved for the most part.
My biggest tips to running a workshop with kids this age:
- Keep it short (1 hour max)
- Come with a plan, but be ready to improvise
- Give kids "breaks" to run around and get their energy out -- this will also help bring kids who have "checked out" back into the game
- Stick with a theme that kids will understand. Our recurring theme in this particular workshop just happened to be a monkey. They responded so well to the monkey the first few times that I ran with it and we all laughed. We threw in some bananasana and shouted like a howler monkey.
Here's a little rundown of how the workshop went:
1. Breathing
Sit with your legs folded and crossed, and back straight. Begin with hands on heart, feel your heart beat. Put the palms of your hands together in front of your heart. Close your eyes & take 3 big breaths. Imagine your belly is an empty balloon and fill that balloon with air, then empty that balloon again. Our breath is food for our body, like how we put gas our cars we need to put lots of air into our bodies to keep them going!
Now bring your arms overhead really big when you breathe in, and bring them all the way down as your balloon empties. Balloon breath helps to keep you focused and calms you down when you’re feeling scared, confused, angry, or a little bit of stress.
2. Supine Warm-up
Lie down on your back and get ready because we’re going on an adventure walk today! Bring both of your feet up above you with your legs straight and imagine that you’re standing on the ceiling, now start to walk!
Keep your right leg straight as you bring your left arm straight and switch. Make each step be a whole balloon breath, filling up when the right leg comes up and emptying as the L leg comes up. Now start to go a little faster, we’re running! Run run run, and what’s that we see? It’s a pond! Ready, set, jump! Reach up to the ceiling with your hands and your feet, jump in jump in! Squeeze your knees with your arms like a tiny ball—cannon ball!
3. Belly Warm-up
Come onto your belly and reach forward with your arms and back with your feet. Then start to kick your feet and wave your arms and swim. Remember to breathe as you swim!
Now grab your elbows and rest your head. Take deep breaths, and be quiet….. because now, on your mat, you’ve become a big, CROCODILE! Lift your head up and look from side to side. Make your neck long like a croc’s nose and let your shoulders relax. Now let go of your elbows and bring your hands to the side of your chest and come up out of the water! Lift yourself up on your hands bring your chest up and look up toward the sky! Breathe and lift yourself up! Show us your big croc belly!
4. Halfway-up warm-up
Bend your knees and come up like a cat, we’ve made it to the shore.
Flow through cat/cow and explain breathing pattern.
Let your toes come under and grab a hold of your mat, and lift your bottom high into the ground! Here we are in our big dog stretch. What do we say doggies? Give me a ruff ruff if you feel good! Breathe in and out! Imagine you have a tail and are sticking it right back behind you. Look back toward your feet.
Look up at your hands and jump where your hands are.
5. Standing
Come up to stand. Now bring your hands to your heart and feel your heart beat. Then bring your hands to your belly and be sure you are still filling up your balloon entirely and emptying it back out.
Now shrug your shoulders up to your ears and let them fall down. Now reach up bring your eyes to your thumbs get as tall as you can, then fold yourself in half and try to touch the floor.
6. Low Lunge Sun Salutation
Now we are going to go on a journey to the sun to get nice and warm!
First you are a strong, tall mountain. Reach your arms up and get as tall as you can, reaching up to the sky, fill up your belly with air and fold yourself in half, step your right foot way back and drop down onto your knee.
Now look up to the sun and take a deep breath in for energy, then use your hands to push your mat away and step your feet together and bring your bottom up to your doggie pose.
Take another breath in then step the right foot all the way up to the top again and let your knee fall, look up at the sun! Say, "WAKE UP SUN!"
Now step your left foot up to your hands and let your body fold in half again. Let your balloon empty here. Now deep breath in and reach up, get a little closer to the sun!! Repeat.
7. Basic Sun Salutation
Next time, bring your hands onto the ground and hop your feet back like a frog. Lay on your belly. Use your hands to lift your chest up and look up to the sun, take a deep breath in and lift your bottom back up into the sky. Look up at your hands again and hop up like a frog to meet your hands. This is called our sun salutation, or a way to get energy and say hello to the sun!
8. Standing Balance
Now that we have some energy from the sun, we are going to explore a little bit more. As we walk through the sunny jungle, what do we see? Why, it’s a big tall tree!
TREE pose: reach arms up overhead and spread your branches. What’s that in the tree, let’s go down to see!
Fold yourself in half again and come up halfway. Stick your tail back like a monkey and look forward to look for a monkey friend. Do we feel good monkeys? What does the monkey say?
Now come back up and we’ve found another tree on the other side! Repeat.
9. Fold
What’s that I see down at the ground?
Ostrich! Grab elbows and fold forward. Bury your head deep in the ground. What do I see way down there?
Grab the back of your ankles and bring your bottom down. It’s a SPIDER! Rock from side to side, take deep breaths to build energy to make your web. Now skitter around and make your web as big as you can!!
10. Standing Balance
Top of mat, hands to belly & breathe. Imagine you are a mountain, strong and steady, even in the toughest of winds. Mountains don’t blow over in storms. They are strong and steady. Now balance on your foot, and we are going to make wings with our arms. From the top of our mountain, we are going to fly! Imagine you are a kite, your standing leg is your string—strong and steady, and you are floating up in the sky. Graceful and elegant.
Uh oh—is the wind changing? No, it’s that naughty monkey and he’s gotten a hold of the kite string! Drop your foot to the mat and open your legs wide. Swing your arms from side to side and bend your knees a few times. What do you say, monkeys? Are you naughty monkeys or are you nice?
Ready to be nice, monkey? Grab that kite string and let’s try again on the other side.
11. Standing Movement
Now that we’ve said hello to the sun, it is getting late and the sun needs to go to bed. So look up to the sky and reach up toward the sun, reach reach reach like you’re trying to grab it and hold it in your hands. Then squeeze your palms together as you’ve caught a tiny bit of the sun to carry with you. Bring your tight hands together in front of your heart again. You need to make some space in your heart to keep this light from the sun with you, so bring your shoulders wider and lift your chest, and bring your palms onto your heart. Keep this light with you in your heart for the rest of the day!
So at the top of the mountain, I see bright and shiny a STAR! Step your feet apart on your mat and bring your hands to your sides like a star. Deep breaths to make your star shine brighter.
Turn your toes to point to the front of the mat and bend into your knee. Look at your toes and make sure you can still see them. Reach up with R hand to grab even more of your star friends. Then bring your right elbow to your knee and get those stars with your left hand that you may not have seen. Turn your toes again to Wide FF. See if you can see any falling stars behind you and grab them. Repeat.
12. Sun Salutation (skip if short on time)
What’s that behind you? Do you see it? Oh it’s our friend monkey again! Let’s scoot our feet together and bring our bottoms down. Bring your knees wide and stick your tail out. Here we are, sleeping monkeys. Drop your head down and shake your head no, no, no, no. Now look forward, and get ready, we are going to wake our monkey up! Let’s bring the sun back out!
Hands to ground and step feet back lay on belly, look up to sun, down dog. Hop up like a monkey to top of mat and come up halfway to wiggle monkey tail. Then come all the way up and reach up a few times, say WAKE UP SUN!
13. Seated movement
Sun is shining again, and now there’s rainbow! Come onto knees and stretch to R side. Drop bottom to L side of knees and even bigger stretch. Hand to knee & twist and see if you can see the end of the rainbow. I see more over there! Switch.
Butterfly, flap your wings.
Now reach hands underneath your ankles and grab a hold of them. Lift your feet of the ground and balance, and you’ve become a beautiful flower. Bloom, you pretty flower.
I see our safe little homes, our birds nests in the distance. We have to cross a few obstacles to get there. First, I see a slide. Hands behind you and drop to your elbows reach your legs long, lift your belly up stretch your toes. Arch your back and rest on your elbows. (Fish pose)
Now we have to cross a bridge to get there. Onto back for bridge. Lift your hips.
14. Relax
Come to a tiny little ball and roll around.
Bring your hands to the mat and swing your hips up to bring your legs behind you. Bring your hands to your lower and lift your legs up—candle pose.
Now bring your knees wide toward your armpits and grab your feet. Roll around like a silly monkey.
Knees back together and twists.
One more tight little ball. Stretch yourself out trying to take up as much space on your mat as you can and close your eyes.
Relax your whole body completely. When I call the parts of the body, do not move them, but just to feel them. Slowly guide children through each bit of the body to relax -- fingers, whole hands, arms, toes, feet, etc.
My music for this workshop was Kira Willey's Dance for the Sun. I highly recommend it!
My music for this workshop was Kira Willey's Dance for the Sun. I highly recommend it!
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