Goals & Lead Balloons
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
French writer (1900 - 1944)
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| A successful mandala |
Fun is always my goal for the children I teach yoga to. I've found the best way to achieve this is to have a lesson plan for every class. Despite that, even the best laid plans don't always work, and factors out of my control sometimes change everything. Several weeks ago, New York was having a heat wave. The children at the day camp I am teach at were exhausted from the 90 plus degree heat & wanted nothing to do with the active games I had planned, and understandably so. My lesson was based around mandalas: we would make human mandalas out of our bodies, an actively that has always been very successful in the past. The expression "lead balloon" fits the students reactions to this quite well. I was able to get the older children to participate early in the day, but the younger children were not interested at all once the sun came out. It was back to the drawing board for me, but luckily drawing boards can hold a lot of inspiration. We started playing "chalkboard" instead.
Chalkboard is a great game that's played in pairs. One child draws a picture on their partners back, like a sun or a tree, and their partner tries to guess what is being drawn. And let me tell you, what a difference from the physical games I was trying before! There were smiles all around this time, and everyone stayed cool.
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Children playing chalkboard
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Yoga for kids is a beautiful practice that allows your child to relax while cultivating open-mindedness and reaping overall health advantages. Although yoga for kids has been practised for thousands of years, the focus on children's yoga is pretty recent and rising. Therefore, yoga is a wonderful present to offer your children since it builds personality and body knowledge from a young age. In addition, children are natural Yogis; they are incredibly flexible. Their capacity to believe and trust helps them accept yoga's lessons in a motivating and inspiring way.
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