Three things today…
- The Latest Kids Yoga Teacher Training Info
- Free Partner Yoga Tip
- More Partner Yoga
1. Kids Yoga Teacher Training Replay
Aruna posted a video about the Standards in Children’s Yoga. So if you’ve been thinking of getting kids training, you may want so give this a listen. This explains what is happening with the Yoga Alliance Registered Children’s Yoga School Standards:
If it is past 2021, check out our YouTube channel for the latest update.
2. Kids Partner Yoga Tip
How to Match Kids in Partners
A great tip for partner yoga comes from Janet Williams of Children’s Yoga Books. It solves a problem I have faced many times doing partner yoga with kids. It’s the problem of matching kids up with partners.
If you let the kids match themselves it sometimes works out where everyone has a BFF (best friend forever) and they partner. But often there are a few kids who don’t know who to partner with, or one kid who is not partnered and often the one who is left behind, who others don’t want to partner with, and it ends up feeling generally yucky.
If the teacher partners the children, it can feel like they are being forced to partner with someone they don’t want. Children are no the best at masking their emotions so sometimes the process of partnering children can feel awkward, even though you are trying to avoid feelings getting hurt.
Janet’s wonderful suggestion in to use cards, to create the partners.
A Fun Way to Match Children for Partner Yoga Poses
For this activity you need a deck of regular playing cards or you can print 2 or 3 of each your favorite pose cards like the Frog Yoga Alphabet Printable Cards in our Yoga Literacy Teacher Training.
The Frog Yoga Alphabet Cards (and more) are included in your registration.
- Pull out enough cards from the deck so you have pairs equal to the number of children you have in attendance (eg. for 10 children use 5 pairs). When there is an odd number, try a wild card, that joins the group closest to them, for a group of 3 kids,
- Give each child a card, then tell the kids to find the children with the matching card,
- When the children find their match they do the yoga pose you give or they make up a partner yoga pose for the pose on their card,
- Each set of partners then teachers their pose to the rest of the class and everyone does that pose,
- If time permits collect the cards, shuffle, and hand them out again to get new random pairs and new poses each time
Matching new pairs becomes a fun game and not something you are making the kids do.
Thanks Janet for the great tip!
3. More Partner Yoga
For School Age children partner yoga is usually a big hit, so you will want a lot of ideas if you intend to teach all year long.You can find more Partner Yoga here:
- This free article about Partner Yoga,
- The Family Yoga Teacher Training, The Chakras for Children Teacher Training, and the Yoga Literacy Teacher Training.
Kids Yoga Teacher Training Certification
Last, but not least….
You are invited to come for the next Kids Yoga Teacher Training.
Come get this new Certificate in Kids Yoga Training and leave with a rewarding weekend and tons of resources. You’ll be glad you did!