Kids Yoga Classes: 50 Themes for Teaching (+ Free Printable)

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 twelve years ago, when I first started teaching Movement, 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.

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. 

If you want the FULL list of 50 kids yoga themes, get it here!

Choose something that you are interested in so you can let your passion shine through, or let the students help you choose so they are invested.

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!)

Animals

There are TONS of yoga poses that are animals, and so many more that can be invented.  I spend about half the year with 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. 

The best way to show existing animal poses is with pose cards, and then let the kids help create the rest!

Here are some sub-themes for our favorite animal groups:

• Desert Animals
• Arctic Animals
• Sahara Animals
• Jungle Animals
• Ocean Animals

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.  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 and sharing their favorite animals.

This post is ALL about Animal Yoga ABC’s! Get a free download on the page as well.

What other ways can you create poses for the ABC’s? Grab a huge poster and get creative.

• Countries around world
• Household objects
• Things you find in nature
• Classroom objects
• Spell your own name with your favorite things!

Adventure Themes

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 fingers 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!

Some books by Kid’s Yoga Stories have adventures with yoga poses added in already.  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!

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). During autumn the leaves change color and begin to fall. In winter you become frozen! But the birds may still come visit 🙂

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.

Can you create a class around each season?

• Spring Themed Yoga Poses
• Summer Themed Yoga
• Fall Theme Yoga and Mindfulness
• Winter Themed Yoga Poses

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.
• 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.

Use lots of positive praise and teach your students about positive affirmations during this lesson as well.

Check out this post on Gratitude for a more in-depth guide to gratitude yoga, kindness, and partner poses.

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

Holidays and celebrations are great for so many themes. I almost never use religious holiday themes 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

• 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

A few holiday lessons that are ready to go:

• Halloween yoga poses for kids
• Thanksgiving yoga and mindfulness lesson
• Christmas yoga poses and lesson plan
• New Year’s yoga class for kids

Check out my Halloween Yoga Poses video here:

Feelings/Emotions

It’s amazingly simple to incorporate feelings and emotions in a kids yoga class. A lot of yoga and mindfulness is really about noticing our bodies and paying attention to our emotions.

Some classes can be completely focused on this theme, or you can weave it in to any class just by using the right words.

• 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 — Child’s pose, Woodchopper breath, Warrior 2 , etc.
• 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 the challenge of improving their balance and flexibility. I talk more about the benefits these have on our bodies, and then we work on building strength with balance, and flexibility with breath.

Many kids that are less interested in the “yoga” part of yoga classes may be drawn in if you teach them about how balance and flexibility can help them improve their athleticism in other sports.

• Challenge your older students to increase their flexibility and stamina with sequences that are linked with breath.
• Use this list of Sports Themed Kids Yoga Poses to help them feel connected to other sports they may play
• Try this specific sequence of poses called a Yoga Flow that works really well for balance and flexibility.

What other themes do you use for kids yoga? This was just a teaser, so be sure to download the full list in the free download below.

Don’t forget to grab the extended list of 50 kids yoga classes theme ideas right here:

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