Instructor: Jennifer Faircloth
Community: Preschool Ages, 45 minutes
Plan Creation Date: October 26, 2015
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Grounding
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Belly Breathing – Have students practice belly breathing while providing imagery addressing the grounding theme (feel your body grounded on the floor, connected to the earth). Ask students to close their eyes and think of people in their lives that help them feel strong and grounded. They can pick a person to be strong for today.
- Pinwheel Breath – Set the environment with soothing background music. Encourage the children to focus on moving the pinwheel with slow breaths. ‘When you feel anxious or upset, imagine slowing making the pinwheel turn. With each breath, feel the solid earth beneath your body. You feel grounded, like a strong rock.’
Activate
- Rock and Roll to Mountain – Have students stand as still as a mountain. Ask for a student leader to keep the beat for four slow and steady counts.
- Yoga Calm Top 10 – Have student keep time with the drum. Transition for four beats, hold for four beats while another student leads the poses. Complete Woodchopper, mountain, roots (emphasizing the grounding nature of roots connecting you to the earth, like a strong tree), crescent moon. Complete sequence twice with different student leaders.
- Compliment Game – Have student leaders take turns standing inside the compliment sphere and encourage compliments based on one thing they did well while leading the group. Make it concrete vs. abstract, for this younger group.
Calm
- Twist – Done while sitting on their mats/carpet squares.
- Relaxation – Guided meditation using an archetype that emphasizes struggle and inner strength within a fairy tale theme.