End of term tips for kids yoga lessons

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Whether your kids yoga classes are in school or not, the end of a school term is likely to impact on the children, especially if it is the end of a school year. This can impact your classes and you too.
 
Emotions can run extremely high at this time of year.
 
You might notice children feeling tired and wired, you may see emotional outbursts, defiance, or even some children just ‘checking out’.
 
Please know that this is all completely normal, as a primary school teacher of many years (and a parent too), I have witnessed many times over ‘end-of-term-itus!’
 
After many weeks of working in their lessons and having structure in their day, things may start easing off and the timetable may change.
 
Especially if it is also the end of an academic year. This means….
 
A lot of changes!
 
Many children and adults struggle with changes, things can feel different. For example, in school, the children may see that wall displays are being taken down, books and resources are being moved room to room, things are starting to look and feel very different.
There is likely to be events within the school day, like end of year assemblies, sports days, leavers assemblies, special experience days. This can feel very unsettling for a lot of children who sense change in the rhythm of school life.
When transition day happens- the children all meet their teacher for next year- this brings about a whole host of emotions, fears, worries, excitement! They know that life for them is changing.
 
All of this can really impact on many children as they try to come to terms with what is happening in their life. Their can be such a mix of feelings and thoughts that can be confusing and this, when combined with tiredness, can feel very overwhelming which leads to changes in behaviour or the ‘feel’ of our kids yoga classes.
 
Here are some tips for dealing with this:
 
Have compassion for yourself, children and any staff
Sometimes just understanding what is going on and expecting there to be some behaviour changes and big feelings can really help.

Recognise your own feelings- irritation, tiredness, impatience, sadness (as some children leave our classes) in amongst it all.

Holding space for compassion for what is going on here for you, the children and the staff, is a great way to live your yoga off the mat.  (By the way, I highly recommend Judith Lasater’s book ‘Living your Yoga’ for more on this.)
 
Speak to the changes and validate emotions around those.
It can be really tempting to ignore what is going on and the changes that are happening- for fear that it will make things worse- will everyone go crazy or cry?!

However, I think it is really important to give a voice to the thoughts and feelings that are happening at this time.

This might look like:

• In a yoga club (where there are likely smaller group sizes) giving some time to talk about feelings together and maybe express those emotions with poses to represent the feelings.
• In curriculum classes, commenting on all of the different feelings and thoughts that might be happening and normalising those as very human responses.

For me, emotion education is integral to my classes and I love to explore how emotions may feel physically in the body, how we can allow ourselves to experience that feeling and also, how we can support ourselves when the emotion feels too much.
 
Share tools for grounding and relaxation.
At the end of term it can be tempting to have a fun session, focus on the excitement of the upcoming holidays and celebrate the term that has passed.

This is great. I would also say that celebration and fun is necessary, but so is grounding and relaxation.

This is the time of year when children need these practices more than ever. This is when children can put their knowledge into practice in real life.

I would focus on regulating practices such as these

Also, tools like relaxation stories, body scans, and calming breathing techniques are especially useful this time of year..
 
What are your favourite grounding techniques?

Are you going to use them in your end of term classes?
 
I love hearing from other kids yoga teachers, do you have a question, a comment or an idea for a future video/ blog?

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