It’s finally summer! A perfect time for a Kids Yoga Summer Camp.

I remember the first time I offered a full day/full week kids yoga camp, it was not what I expected.

The biggest learning curve was not the yoga part. I had taught a lot of kids yoga, it wasn’t hard to think of activities.

No, it was sorting out the washroom routine!  There were no public washrooms at the playground so if one child had to go, that meant the end of the playground visit for everyone.  

If you’re planning a summer camp for kids, don’t forget to plan these details and if you also want kids yoga ideas, we’ve got that covered here too.

Mini Training Highlights: Summer Camp Activities

Here are some of the key takeaways from the topic of Kids Yoga Summer Camps from our free mini-training that happened in June 2022:

• There are many wonderful activities that take too much time for a regular kids yoga class so camps are the perfect time for them,
• Choosing an activity that is age-appropriate is key!  We talked a lot about the age for each activity.
• A one week camp with 10 kids can be a good cash injection, you just have to make sure you don’t burn yourself out.

Check out my 5 Favourite Camp Activities and the discussion around them in the video replay in the June Free Mini Training because some of you might be looking for activities to do during your camp.

These 5 activities will enhance your camps. Some are of my favourites because with a camp you have a lot more time to do activities that you can’t fit into a one hour class.

Preview: Kids Yoga Summer Camps

Here’s a preview of the video with the first 3 activities from our YouTube channel:

Watch the full video in the June 2022 replay in the free course here.

5 Kids Yoga Activities to Enhance Your Camps this Summer

1. Chakras

If you’re doing chakras for children, try presenting them over a series of classes.

If I was teaching the chakras to children, I would limit this to a yoga studio. That’s because if you’re doing chakras in a school or a daycare, they may be a little too esoteric, some people might mistake it for some kind of religious teaching. You just don’t want to have any problems in that department. I really recommend this for a private camp, yoga in the park, in a yoga studio or in your home studio.

Here’s what the activity could look like if presented at a camp from Monday to Friday:

• Monday: What are Chakras (see April 2022 Mini-Training for Lesson Plan). Introduce the concept of the chakras.
• Tuesday: The Lower Triangle (Chakras 1, 2 + 3)
• Wednesday: The Heart Centre (4th Chakra)
  • You can include all kinds of social-emotional learning and empathy lessons into that one lesson plan.
• Thursday: The Upper Triangle (Chakra 5, 6 +7)
• Friday: Your Chakras are your talents, how will you use them? For those who have the workbook from the chakras for children training, you can do use the questionnaires in those worksheets. Or the kids can reflect on which of the talents are associated with the chakras

Watch the April 2022 Free Mini Training – Chakras for Children here.

Consider getting the 4 hour Chakras for Children Certificate here.

2. Mandala Activities

These Mandala activities can take a while to complete so they are great for camps.

This activity requires some big paper, some stamps, and stamp pads.

One of my colleagues tried doing this at home but she said her mandala turned into an oblique shape. The secret to stamping a mandala is very similar to why we meditate. It about starting in the center and moving from the centre to the outside.

If you start at the outside, trying to make a circle, its will be a lot harder to make it look even the way a mandala does.

The idea is that you meditate you check in with yourself, this is what my meditation teacher used to say to us. If you want to love yourself, the way you do that is to know yourself.

We start in the center and then from there we create our vision for our life based on what we want to achieve and what we can do. Whereas if you’re always trying to create your life from what other people are telling you to be, that is a very difficult existence because it’s really hard to please everybody.

We should create a mandala just like meditation, from the inside to the outside.

Then you can move this activity into yoga by making a group yoga pose in Mandala shapes as pictured in the image above.

3. My Song

The My Song activity is where you ask the children to share a song that is meaningful to them. Each child can say their song and talk about why they like that song. Then everyone can listen to the song.

When I started doing the My Song activity, I actually had an iPod!

One bonus of this activity is it’s a great way to discover songs to add to your music playlists. I don’t listen to pop music very often so this is one way to find out the songs that are popular with children.

When it comes to music, I use a lot of playlists when I teach classes, to sort the music by the mood.

When I’m teaching classes I’ll have relaxing songs, warm-up songs or songs with the moves built right into them. When the time comes and we’re ready to relax, I can go to the relaxing songs playlist and find a song.

A little back story about the My Song activity, I did this for the first time when I was in high school and one of my teachers did it with our class. I still remember people’s songs to this day. It was a nice way for us to get to know each other in the class.

People chose all types of songs so not only did it expose us to different genres of music that we might not listen to, it also gave everyone a way to talk about something that was meaningful to them without it being too risky.

4. Eye Pillows

This is a very simple activity that can be done a number of ways.

When I have a lot of time we sew eye pillows in class with a needle and thread and rectangles of material. We sewed an outer pillowcase that we can wash and an inner pillow that we filled with rice.

The class of students, mostly over six years old, really enjoyed it. They were amazed that they can just make their own thing.

I remember one camp we did sewing, and I helped a student sew up a hole in their sock. They were both amazed and happy that the sock was fixed.

When I have the time, I like to sew with kids, but if I don’t there is another option. You can buy socks from the store and use fabric markers to draw on them to make a colourful pillow case. You have to set the drawings by putting the sock in the dryer or pressing with an iron.

Then you fill the inner sock with rice and tie the end with an elastic.

You can incorporate scents if it is appropriate, like lavender or other herbs, or essential oils, to add to the eye pillows. Make sure to check first if that’s okay with the kids because not everyone likes scents. I would advertise the use of scents in the class description so there are no surprises. ikm

You can use the eye pillows for the rest of the week. There are more activities with the eye pillows in the Inclusive Yoga Certificate.

5. Yoga Names + Names

We developed the Frog Yoga Alphabet especially to help keep kids busy during kid’s yoga and yoga camps.  You can print and play all kinds of games with them.

Sometimes people think a Yoga Alphabet is just for children learning the alphabet, but with a little imagination, those letters become words and the words become games and stories! 

In this activity, we used the Frog Yoga Alphabet to spell children’s names. Every letter has its corresponding pose and children can colour different letters each day.

We also do yoga for the letters.

In the picture above, we had an afternoon camp that was about three hours. Lauren finished colouring her letters and we also did the yoga poses. Then we came back to colouring and do another person’s name.

Lauren stapled her letters in the corners after she coloured in the pictures. She got to take home a name banner that day to put on her wall.

I like Lauren’s idea for a banner. I had been stapling the poses like a book.

If you were in a studio where you could hang up all the names and leave them up throughout the week, you could inspire others with the activity.

Then, when kids arrive they could to their own name, or a friend’s name, and do all their poses as a warm-up.

Kids Yoga Summer Camp

Yoga and fun go hand in hand. So when you’ve got the extra time in a Yoga Camp let these activities inspire you to enhance your camps.

Watch the full June 2022 Free Mini Training here or click the button below.