Playful Planning in your Kids Yoga Business

 📽️ Prefer video format? Watch it here!   🎁 Get the free plans here

This month I’m going to be talking about something that you might think is boring! It is something that I don’t think is talked enough about in kids yoga teacher training. PLANNING!

I often hear from the kids yoga teachers that I work with that they have lots of fun ideas and games to use with kids , but no idea how to structure a class. They don’t know where to start, what a class should look like and how to plan. It can be a barrier to teaching and also something that some kids yoga teachers feel embarrassed about.
If this is you, read on…
 
As a class teacher, planning was a big part of the job and to be honest, one I really hated!
                                       “Fail to plan, plan to fail!”

I don’t necessarily believe that failing to plan always leads to failure, because I do think that us yoga teachers tend to be intuitive and are generally great at reading a room, knowing what children need and are able to include that.

But I do think that it is good to have an idea of where you are going in your lesson or series of lessons, here’s why:

• If you plan your lessons/ or classes, you are less likely to repeat things! You have something to refer back on, to see what you have already done. Which informs what you can do next.
• Your yoga classes have a structure or flow and are more likely to fit together nicely.
• Lesson plans help you to be a reflective practitioner, which makes you better at what you do- you can scribble on your plan what worked, what didn’t, and this informs your future classes.
• When you plan, you know where you are going and this is good for your own nervous system. It’s also good to rely on, on those day’s when you aren’t feeling so creative!

When I first started teaching yoga I felt like I was planning lessons all of the time and it really stressed me out! If this is you, read on…
 
There are three main types of planning, long, medium and short term planning. Getting your head around what they are and when and how to use them can really impact the quality of your classes and your confidence in what you deliver.
So, let’s get into them:
 
Long term, this is when you have an overview of what you will teach over a long period of time, so this might be a year for example, you might have ideas of themes that you will use over the course of the year. This type of planning is big picture planning and gives you a really broad idea of what you will be focussing on for each half term (for example) in a very broad way. This might look like listing how many weeks you have in each term and a general idea of some themes you might teach in this time. This works well for holding ideas all in one place, so adding in additional ideas like special days / teacher days etc can be really helpful. I do my long term plan at the beginning of the academic year, because this is how I work (as most of my work is in schools). You could use a calendar year, if that is how you work, or some other way that works for you and your business. Although I only do this plan once, it is a working document, full of scribbles where I add on any things that are important or that get changed.
 
Medium term, this is my most used type of plan. It is where I detail the main things that will happen in each lesson in a series of lessons. So, I’ll list the main features of each lesson and plan what will go in each section. I’ll think about the props that I’ll use each week, which poses I’ll use, which games I’ll play and which breathing techniques and relaxation. I plan like this at the start of each half term, so I only plan once at the beginning of each half term. Batching like this helps me be more efficient with my time. As someone who is neurodivergent, having little ‘hacks’ or shortcuts like this, helps me a great deal. I do all of the thinking about planning at one time and do all of the tasks associated with it (like printing the plans and putting them in my folder), then the plans are ready to go when I need them.
 
Short term, this is really a focused plan for just one lesson. I only really use a single lesson plan for a one- off lesson. For example, if I’m doing a special lesson for a particular reason such as a session for Rainbows or a Well-Being Day for a school (if you aren’t sure what this is, check out this video or this blog).
I’ve been teaching for a long time and I don’t really need too much detail in a plan. It can be helpful if it is the start of your teaching journey or, if you are embarking on teaching a new style of class or something that is not yet second nature. A lesson plan for one lesson might include scripts of specific things that you want to say or a reminder of how to play a particular game, I might also include timings for each section, so that I don’t over run.
 
Where do I even start?
I am all about removing barriers and helping kids yoga teachers grow in confidence so we can change the world!
So, if you would like to have a helping hand with your plans, get the freebie to use as a basis for your own yoga classes. They are in word format, so you can just download them and type straight into them. There are no frills and whistles here, don’t expect a beautiful PDF with lots of lovely branding and images! This is just a super simple, back to basics word document, that I hope will make life a little easier by making planning straightforward for you.

Download them and make them your own, we are not ‘cut and paste’ yoga teachers, we all have our own unique style and gifts to share with the world. I am not saying these plans are ‘perfect’ or the only way to do things. But they are what I use, and I find them helpful and I hope you do too!
 
Over the next few weeks I’ll be talking more about planning for your kids yoga classes, and how to make it a manageable and easy process for you. So stay tuned for the next instalments! If you have a question about planning, email me about it.

If this is something that you find hard and you would like to talk through this with me, why not book a focussed ‘Playful Planning’ hour with me?  After I have a few details about you and your business to bring me up to speed on where you are at, we spend an hour together to talk through your planning process and I help you to find a way that works for you.

Would you like to know more about planning lessons within school time? You might find my training ‘Structure for Success’ really useful.

Thanks for reading, I'd love to know your thoughts on this :)
x Julia