Halloween

5 Fun Things to do with Stickers in Kids Yoga

Healthier Alternatives to Candy at Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching and junk food is filling up the stores shelves.

Yoga Sticker of a frog doing tree pose with the word Steady under — Crack and Peel Yoga Sticker: Steady

As a kids yoga advocate I’m always looking for healthy yoga alternatives to reduce the amount of junk food kids are fed. Here are a couple of ideas you may find helpful if you are celebrating Halloween with kids or just for to get your children to do yoga.

Free Kids Yoga Halloween Handout

This Kids Yoga colouring page that I handed out with treats a few years ago was a hit. The free PDF is at this link including a video of how I used the pages on Halloween.

This year I’m going to go a step further with a new treat for the little monsters and princesses that slink up my step: Yoga Stickers!

The stickers are a new resource included in the Yoga Literacy – Kids Yoga Teacher Certification.

Yoga Sticker with a Frog Meditating and the word Calm under — Crack and Peel Sticker: Calm

I got them about a month ago because new kids yoga teacher graduates were asking for stickers. The Frog Yoga pictures are cute images for stickers and there are a lot of fun things to do with them in yoga classes with children.

5 Fun Things to Do with Stickers in Yoga

Here are 5 Fun Things you can do with yoga stickers in your kids yoga classes:

Space Markers: if you don’t have yoga mats for each child, you can stick the stickers on the floor, a blanket or pillow (just don’t stick them on your fancy ones – they are stickers after all). You could also cut up a Yoga Mat in to circles or squares and place a sticker in the centre of the circle. This lets your class move around doing Yoga poses and then come back and sit on a sticker when you want to get everyone settled down.

Yoga Sticker of a frog doing bow pose and the word Kind under — Crack and Peel Yoga Sticker: KIND

Crafty Yoga Projects: Stickers are an easy way to decorate things like bookmarks, jars, or cans. They are already sticky which saves the mess that comes with gluing things.

Marvelous Motivation: Those who utilize ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) methods know that positive reinforcement can be very effective. Stickers work like awards and can be extremely motivating for some children. I’ve seen kids who will do an hour of yoga to get a sticker award at the end of class. They’re a nice alternative from reinforcing positive behavior with candy. Sometimes kids will save their unused stickers and trade them in for a larger prize.

Lesson Themes: Calm, Brave, Steady, and Strong are the words on these stickers (see the images of the stickers on the side). They can prompt wonderful heart to heart discussions. What do these words mean to you? What yoga poses help you feel this way? What else can you do to feel this way? The stickers are like having a four week lesson plan in your pocket.
Crack and Peel Yoga Sticker: Brave
Just Give them Out! Its fun to just give the kids stickers, not as a reward, not as an exchange, not for any other reason than to give. Whether its Halloween or not, Yoga Stickers are great treats.

If you are interested in kids Yoga Stickers, you can get them with the Yoga Literacy Kids Yoga Training Certification. Stickers and many other really useful tools are included (see the picture below).

Kids Yoga Certification

Its a wonderful weekend Kids Yoga Teacher Certification in Yoga Literacy. You can see all the details are at this link. It is worth the trip to Toronto! You get a Certificate for the weekend training that also counts toward Certification with a Yoga Alliance Registered Children’s Yoga School (95 Hour Required Training).

Tools for Kids Yoga Training — All these resources are included in the Yoga Literacy Certificate that features the Frog Yoga Alphabet Tools

You can also order yoga stickers and have them shipped to you to use with your kids (or your playful adults).

To Order Yoga Stickers

Visit our store at this link.

3 Kids Yoga Ideas for a Healthy Halloween – Including Free Printables

Free Kids Yoga Activities for Halloween

Young Yoga Masters is celebrating this October with free treats! Our Four Year Blog-iversary passed and Halloween is just around the corner. To thank you for staying connected we’ve got a free treat and Halloween fun for you and the children celebrating with you. Lets make this Halloween a little more fun and healthy.

free yoga activty page — Consider adding these healthy coloring pages to your treats for Halloween

We’ve got three delights for our blog party:

A Healthy Treat so you can shell-out a little yoga.
A Fear Filled Story for Introducing your Kids Yoga Lesson Plan
A Halloween Song that will get children stretching and breathing.

A Healthy Halloween Treat You Can Shell-Out

At my house we get about 100 kids on Halloween that I’m going to experiment on this year.

Halloween Moon — Get your free printable coloring pages.

I’m giving out edible treats (I don’t want my house egged) AND I’m slipping in a Yoga Coloring page to each unsuspecting costumed visitor. I’ll post their reactions on Facebook and Twitter next week (#healthyhalloween).

Now you can also print these yoga coloring pages – as many as you want. The two pictures you see in this blog post are yours by clicking below. You’re invited to share this link with anyone who also wants a healthy treat to give kids.

FREE PRINTABLE COLORING PAGES CLICK HERE:

Healthy Halloween Yoga Pages PDF

A Halloween Story for Yoga with Kids

Try introducing your Halloween lesson plan to add some real yoga to your fun:

Once upon a time a man traveled home at night by the light of the moon. He walked nimbly almost holding his breath because everyone said a deadly cobra lived beside the road. Just as he approached the final bend he felt something brush against the front of his ankle. Panicking he ran the last block screaming and shaking his leg.

Throwing himself beneath the light of his front porch he expected to see a snake wrapped around his ankle. What he in fact saw was a child’s skipping rope.

This old yoga story shows us how we don’t see clearly when fear takes over. Remember it when you trick or treat and come upon a scary house with spiders and witches. If you relax and breath you shed some light on the situation.

When you drop the fear you’ll see those spiders aren’t moving because they’re made of plastic.

And the person wearing that big black hat looks a lot like your friends mom and she’s holding a bowl of candy.

Today who wants to do some yoga to dispel fear so we can get lots of candy on Halloween?

A Halloween Song with Yoga Movements

Then you can launch into a warm up with this song:

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate
(Chair pose)

The first one said, “Oh my its getting late.”
(stay in chair pose and point to your watch)

The second one said, “There are witches in the air.”
(come upright and stretch arms in the air)

The third one said, “Oh we don’t care.”
(swoop arms down near the floor bending your knees)

The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”
(run on the spot)

The fifth one said, “I’m ready for some fun!”
(squat down slowly then jump up on “fun”)

OOOOOOOOOHHH went the wind
(stand with hands on waist and bend forward from left to right blowing like wind)

and OUT went the lights
(stretch arms to sides then clap hands on “out”)

and the five little pumpkins rolled out of site.
(rolly polly hands)

When the kids exclaim AGAIN, AGAIN you will be warmed up after one or two reps of this Halloween favorite.

Happy Halloween to everyone and thanks again for reading. If you decide to give out the yoga coloring pages or have any ideas to share for a healthier Halloween leave a comment.

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Become a Kids Yoga Teacher!

Discover Real Yoga and Real Fun in the Young Yoga Masters kids yoga teacher training weekend. Come join us and give yourself a weekend to refresh and renew your practice.

Kids Yoga Teacher Training at Bluebird Montesorri — Participants get inspired in a play based learning training at the Kids Yoga Teacher Certification course.

CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS

The Itsy Bitsy Spider Freaked Out the Yoga Class

The Group Mindset
There must be a technical term for the group mindset that develops with people of any age. In kids classes, usually a few kids will test the limits to see what is allowed. The rest of the kids watch and see and what’s allowed before joining in. If the classroom limits are not established early, you can have a whole group of kids acting out in the same way very quickly. Like what happened in the question Jennifer asked, where before class the kids are running around like crazy. Why? Because they can.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider in the Classroom
Here’s a real story from my kids yoga class this week. Picture six sweet girls in my community centre class. One girl (about 7 years old) went up to her water bottle beside the wall. Lo and behold… a tiny spider was on the floor crawling amidst the bottles. Before you know it every little girl was running around the room, flapping her arms and shrieking at the top of her powerful yoga lungs.

Group mentality has taken over the class.

Returning a Sense of Calm
This is when it may be tempting to get really annoyed and try to out-yell the girls. Hopefully if you’ve done your morning meditation you can resist! I find it most effective to start restoring the calm one child at a time. If you know who, choose the one who started it all.

Try one of the many ways to calm kids down: whisper, sing, or what I did, walk to the girl who first saw the spider and put my finger to my lips in the universal symbol for “ssshhhhh.” Don’t say anything – just make the gesture. These girls were squealing so loudly they wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

Soon the first girl stopped yelling and before you know it, the others did so they could hear what we were talking about.

The first girl started explaining that she saw a spider – even though we all knew this.

So I asked, “What shall we do with it?”

This got every one’s attention and the ideas were flowing – I’ll leave it up to you to imagine all of these. I quickly decided, without too much discussion, to get it on a piece of paper and release the tiny arachnid out the window. Everyone watched him spin a line down to the outside ledge.

Then with another, almost unnoticeable re-direct, back to the mats we go as I announce our next pose – you guessed it – spider pose (aka table).

Does the Rain Regret Falling?
Returning a sense of calm to the classroom requires a calm energy from the teacher. The teacher must stay calm yet completely solid and powerful even though they may feel like they are dampening the situation. Like the way rain falls on everyone without fear or reserve or regret. The rain helps the plants grow!

Its just another day teaching kids yoga, not a big deal, once you learn how to re-direct the energy no one really notices. Well, except maybe one being…

Does anyone know if spiders like snow?