Teaching well-themed kids yoga classes is hard.
Yes I know, yoga is calming and fun… but kids are not inherently calm so the disconnect is sometimes very real.
Flashback to four years ago, when I first started teaching Movement (Yoga in public schools is becoming more common!).
I was at a total loss to figure out how to come up with innovative and exciting kids yoga lessons every day.
My first year of teaching I spent HOURS writing, re-writing, and failing at lesson planning.
I spent every day after school analyzing what went well, and what didn’t.
I searched every site on the web looking for tips and tricks on how to teach better kids yoga classes.
How do you avoid this struggle???
One simple way to come up with plans for kids yoga classes is to have a well thought out THEME.
Pick a theme that you can stretch out to fit several classes, with books, games, and activities.
Choose something that you are interested in so you can let your passion shine through!
Themes help keep kids engaged because it’s often something they can relate to and feel connected to. They contribute and have good ideas when they know the topic, too!
Themes also help ME when I teach because I remember the “plotline” of the story better, or I just generally stay on task better. #winning
What are some easy and relatable themes for teaching kids yoga classes?
Here is a wonderful list of go-to themes that I have used in my teaching. There are a few links to related books and tools that I use and love as well.
Bolded and italicized are poses (if you can’t figure out which pose it’s supposed to be please comment below and I’ll let you know!)
If you want the FULL list of over 40 kids yoga themes, get it here!
Animals
There are TONS of yoga poses that are animals, and so many more that can be invented. I spend about half the year teaching yoga to kindergarten classes just using animal themes.
We start with animal movements on our mats: move like a bear, move like a bunny, move like a frog, etc. Then we focus on how a pose is different from a movement. When we POSE, we hold our body in the shape of an animal.
Freeze dance works well for this, and a game called Museum, directions found here.
Check out some additional fun kids yoga games in this post:
5 Active Kid’s Yoga Games to Have Fun in a Group
The best way to show animal poses is with pose cards.
These adorable game cards are my favorite animal ones, and this cute book, Zoo Zen, is really fun for learning some different animal poses with a trip to the zoo!
Animal ABC’s
This is a great addition to the animal theme above, and I use my adorable deck of ABC Yoga cards to go through a lot of them. This ABC Kids Yoga book is also awesome and my students LOVE both! We try all the poses, sometimes using sounds.
Then we write the ABC’s on a big chart and write an animal for each letter. This way they can review ones they know, and also create new ones! They love using their imaginations.
This post is ALL about Animal Yoga ABC’s! Get a free download on the page as well.
One other awesome set of ABC yoga cards is here. I love these as well because there are duplicates and you can play “Yoga Memory,” if you flip them over and pretend not to see the letters 🙂
A newer ABC yoga book is here, and I just adore the sweet illustrations and hefty style of the book. It is durable and appealing to all ages so far!
Check out the Animal Yoga ABC Pose Cards Here!
Animal Safari
Building again on the animal theme I often use safari-type exploration stories to get lots of poses into a short time frame.
We pick a location (desert, jungle, forest, plains, mountains, ocean) and start off on a hike. I usually pretend to march in place and then hold my thumb and finger up to my eyes as binoculars to look for animals. I let the kids raise a hand to tell me what they see. As we see more and more animals we often have to get into a boat to go down a river or a climb a tree and look for birds.
Lots of versatility with this one and you can also learn about topography and geography if they are older kiddos!
These books, by Kid’s Yoga Stories, are wonderful books that take kiddos on animal adventures. They take up a little more time to read the whole story, but I find they work well for smaller groups.
Here’s a fun animal yoga safari adventure to Kenya!
Seasons/Weather
The seasons and weather themes are great for a last-minute class. Weather is always changing, as are the seasons if you live in the North like me!
The Giving Tree is a great book for the changing of the seasons, and the years, as well as teaching about kindness.
Here’s a free lesson plan to go with the book.
It’s very fun to pretend to be a tree in different seasons.
Start as a small seed, grow up into a tree in the spring. Flowers grow on the tree, bees start to buzz, and fly around. In the summer there are thunderstorms and rain (lightning bolt pose, patter hands on knees).
Trees move a lot in the wind (star pose: opposite hand to foot, come back up, then the other side). You also start to see apples (crouch and curl). You can go on a long tangent or a separate lesson to make applesauce. In autumn the leaves fall, the animals start to gather food, then the snow comes, and the trees are still.
Transportation
Lots of poses can be made transportation-related! Boat and airplane are good places to start. Again, we often go on a journey and use our vehicle poses to get us from place to place.
If you want a few classes in this theme, here are some ideas:
- Make a list of different vehicles and practice them all the first day. Commonly created poses include car, airplane, rocket, boat, submarine, motorcycle, bicycle, train, excavator… and so many more!
- The next class you can choose one to start to tell a story traveling with their vehicle in between other poses.
- The following class they could create their own stories with poses or use partner poses to create new vehicles.
- Play a game with especially active kiddos: try a move-and-freeze game, changing vehicles every time you freeze.
- Or you can play “Red light, Green light” and use the red light for posing, yellow light for walking, and green light for moving fast.
- My toddlers love The Little Blue Truck, about a truck and all its animal friends. Good for transportation, animal, and friendship themes!
Kindness/Friendship
I often start this theme with kindness towards ourselves. That means a slow sun salutation with deep breaths to help our bodies.
You can add on heart opening poses at the end, reminding them to go slow and take deep breaths to protect their heart.
After kindness to ourselves, we practice some trust games and activities:
- Walk on blocks with a blindfold: with a partner to talk you through it and hold your hand
- Trust falls for older kids
- Blindfolded mat maze: kids that will be blindfolded don’t watch while the others create a maze using the mats, then everyone talks them through the maze, either on top of or in-between the mats (think, “Floor is Lava” but the mats are connected)
- Partner poses: elevator (chair pose holding partner’s arm), double boat, double down dog, back to back chair, etc. Yoga Pretzels has all of these partner poses, and more!
Holidays
Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc., are great for so many themes. I almost never use them in my school, since I teach at a public school and students celebrate a variety of different holidays. It’s pretty hard to do them all or find culturally relevant texts for all of them.
However, holidays may be a perfect theme for you and your kids yoga class!
This Winter Themed yoga class plan has some great ideas for winter holidays as well.
Halloween themed yoga is perfect for anytime in the fall!
St Patricks Day Yoga is a great theme for mid-March!
- Tell a story of the holiday with poses
- Create new poses for holiday characters or objects
- Take some time for students to share what their favorite part of holiday traditions are
- Read a book and create poses as you go
Check out my Halloween Yoga Poses video here:
Feelings/Emotions
It’s amazingly simple to incorporate feelings and emotions in a kids yoga class. There are so many ways to teach about how we are feeling and tie it in with poses that can help.
Mindfulness always ties in nicely, too.
- Let kids share how they are feeling by passing around a special “talking piece” (the person holding it is the only person allowed to talk)
- Come up with poses (or faces) that demonstrate our emotions: sad (forward fold), excited (star), scared (child’s pose)…
- Talk about and practice poses that help us manage our feelings and big emotions
- Read a book and do a pose for each page/feeling. These all work really well: My Many Colored Days, My Heart is Like a Zoo, and Sometimes I Feel Like a Mouse.
Balancing and Flexibility
This is a theme I frequently use for several weeks with my older kiddos (ages 8-11). They love learning about balance and flexibility. I talk more about the benefits these have on our bodies, and then we work on building strength and flexibility.
It’s a great theme to give them some good challenges, and also to build on sequences linked with breath.
Since breath is inexorably linked with gaining flexibility, you can make sure to cue them to inhale and exhale slowly with each new pose.
Many kids that are less interested in the “yoga” part of yoga classes may be drawn in if you teach them aobut how balance and flexibility can help them imrpove their athleticism in other sports.
Use this list of Sports Themed Kids Yoga Poses to help them feel connected to other sports they may play as well.
I have a specific sequence of poses that I call a Yoga Flow that works really well for themes on balance and flexibility.
Check out the pose images and the Kids Yoga Flow sequence here.
I hope you enjoyed my themes and ideas for lesson planning kids yoga classes.
Don’t forget to grab the extended list of 40 kids yoga classes theme ideas right here!
(Post updated August, 2023)
I sent the wrong email address I hit the button before seeing if it was correct , and it went before I could correct it please change and send the free yoga themes to zendrea13@gmail .com
Thank you
Namaste. Calm back ☺️
Hi Andrea! Yes, of course, I’ll help you out. I’ll send you the email directly. If you want as well, you can enter it at this page: https://kumarahyoga.com/free-lesson-plans/ That way you can have direct access to my free resource library as well! Thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy!
Nice blog and thanks for sharing this amazing informative content,
Thank you, Ajay!
I’m so glad you are finding the kids’ yoga and mindfulness content useful. Themes are so fun to use with kids!
Best,
Maia
Great!, very informative content thank you for this content.
You are so welcome! I’m happy it has been useful to you, please let me know if you need anything else at all 🙂 Have fun teaching yoga to kids with these awesome themes!
-Maia