Teaching yoga to children can be a challenging and fun experience. Although beginning instructors can be overwhelmed by the incredible amount of energy a room can hold, preparing ahead of time can make a children’s yoga class much less intimidating for the teacher.
Stories as a method of focus
A great way to tame active and energetic children is to use yoga stories as a tool to guide students through the session. Stories can serve a variety of purposes, including drawing a child’s attention, correcting misbehavior, teaching an important character or moral lesson, setting the pace for the class, and providing young minds with interesting material to grasp.
How to tell stories
Some Yoga instructors tell stories, at the beginning of the class, to attract attention, or at the end of the class, as a call to relaxation; other instructors prefer to weave stories throughout the session. The method a yoga teacher chooses will likely reflect the length of the class, the energy of the instructor, the average age of the youth, and the degree of commitment of the students.
Stories should be adapted to the age of the class, as younger children will benefit from simpler and more interactive stories, and older children will prefer more detailed stories that they can apply to their own lives.
One of the best things a yoga instructor can do with stories is to use props. Kids love hands-on, tactile helpers like Hoberman cushions, blankets, and spheres. They can also have a wonderful time with less practical accessories, such as hats, jewelry, feather boas, flowers, leaves and branches. A smart way to use these items is to distribute them and have each student demonstrate the use of the accessory during a certain point in the story.
Most young people have no problem following the instructor’s lead in asanas during storytelling, but visual aids can also be a great resource to hold children’s attention. An easy way to do this is to bring books with colorful illustrations to display, reserving a story page for each pose.
Create incentives as positive reinforcement
Another fun way to enhance the story is to find a felt board, which is available at any teacher supply store, and enlarge pictures of some of the students in their asanas. Then create fun alternative names for the poses and display the new names, which correspond to the story, on the storyboard, along with a picture of different children performing a variety of yoga techniques. Kids will be proud to have their pictures on the storyboard and will enjoy the task of coming up with new names to match the stories you tell.
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