Yoga in a pre-school setting (age 2.5 - rising 5)

With gratitude I would like to thank Debbie Giles, the children and all her wonderful team at

Freshford pre-school for the photos and the testimonial about my children’s Yoga classes. I

thoroughly enjoyed teaching all the children who attended. I had the privilege to teach two classes per half term spanning the whole academic year. Over this time I got to know the children individually and watched them grow and develop. Each child is unique and they all took to the Yoga in their own way. In the classes over time I observed shy children become more confident, boisterous children calming down more quickly as they became more

A Yoga session at Freshford pre-school (photo with kind permission of the pre-school and parents)

accustomed to the flow of the class and inattentive children looking, listening, and participating whereas earlier in the year they were reluctant to participate in the group.

I loved working with the pre-schools planned topics, I used the topics to plan my classes

accordingly. In this way the Yoga classes linked in with the current topic for that half term. Topics such as Celebrations, Seasons, Lets go to Italy, Making Discoveries to name but a few. In this way the children were able to make connections between the rest of their daily pre-school experiences and the Yoga.

The children were separated into two groups according to age and I would adjust the lesson plan to suit the differing ages and abilities in order to keep the theme child orientated. All the children had the opportunity to explore the benefits of the Yoga at their own pace. The benefits being physical, social, emotional and cognitive as they had fun exploring and learning how to do the physical poses, participating in a group activity, learning and gaining self confidence in a non-competitive activity, and through the use of fiction and non fiction stories the children were given the opportunity to learn new things about the world and their environment. At the end of each class the children were given a few minutes to relax and feel calm and centred.

It can never be too young for a child to do Yoga, the younger they are the more they can learn about looking after their bodies and how to manage their stress levels. In this day and age children and young people are subjected to more and more pressures in every day life, Yoga can therefore be a highly useful tool to take with them on the journey of life.