Namaste kids’ yoga teachers, adults with children in your lives, preschool teachers, or soon-to-be kids’ yoga teachers!
As we head into 2017 we hope your year is full of lots of yoga, mindfulness and meditation and there are a few essentials that any new kids’ yoga teacher, parent or school teacher can use to incorporate yoga into your school day or after school routine!
Here are my top 5 yoga essentials to put in my bag for a successful preschool yoga class:
Parachute
A parachute is a wonderful addition to your kids’ yoga class because you can easily demonstrate teamwork, cooperation, patience and focus! You can use a parachute to balance together in different standing poses, play games, and work together.
Yoga Cards
Yoga cards are excellent props to help your little yogis stay on task and for visual learners, they give young yogis reference guides for their poses. You can also make your own yoga cards for your class and work with your young yogis on being creative and remembering their poses!
Balls
Various sizes of balls are wonderful additions to your preschool yoga class because you can use them to pass around and keep yogis in poses for longer periods of time. Passing the ball to each other with your feet helps engage the core and connect to one another!
Blocks
Yoga blocks are wonderful for preschoolers to learn simple ways to balance. Standing on a yoga block is where balance starts with young yogis. Using blocks in creative ways and traditional ways can help yogis be assisted in their practice and ask for help, as well as learning to fall and get back up again when balance is tricky. Balancing builds self-reliance, self-confidence, courage, focus, and strength.
Music
Spotify
Music is an absolutely essential part of learning for children and can be an absolutely essential way to engage young yogis! Music can be used to inspire movement and place yoga poses in popular tunes or find yoga songs to play and practice to. Getting a subscription to a music site like Spotify is a great way to explore new songs with your students!
For more information about how to engage your preschool yogis and young yogis, join us for Little Heroes Yoga Littlest Yogis Teacher Training and learn exactly how these props bring yoga to life for children from infancy through preschool!
Namaste,
Kimberly Fujitaki
Founder of Little Heroes Yoga: Kids’ Yoga for the Courageous