20 Mantras for Kids in the Classroom

Last month I wrote 15 Ways to Integrate Yoga Into Your School Day and #8 was Weekly Mantras. I can not imagine what my life would have been like with a list of mantras or affirmations up in my classroom to support me when I needed to return back to myself during the school day.

That's why I wanted to dive deeper into the idea of mantras in the classroom and give you a list of my favourites. I hope these ideas can be helpful for you whether you're a classroom teacher, kids yoga teacher, or working with kids in any other capacity.

Mantra vs. Affirmation - what's the difference? A mantra is a sacred sound, word or phrase - often in Sanskrit - that is repeated during spiritual practice to liberate the mind, and connect with divine energy. Affirmations are English-language, goal-oriented statements that are designed to re-wire thinking and boost self-worth. You get to choose which word you like using best in your classes. Here, I'm choosing mantra to honour the depth and tradition that this word holds along with the sacredness and spirituality of it that I wish to pass on to the students I teach. 

20 Mantras For Kids In The Classroom:
-"I am learning"
-"This feels hard because it is hard"
-"I am proud of myself"
-"I trust myself"
-"I will keep trying"
-"I am enough"
-"I am smart and capable"
-"I am unique and special"
-"I can do hard things"
-"Everything is difficult before it gets easy"
-"Mistakes are opportunities to learn and grow"
-"I choose to be positive"
-"One step at a time"
-"What I'm doing right now is enough"
-"I am a good friend"
-"I am loved just the way I am"
-"I choose Mama Earth over convenience"
-"There's always a solution"
-"I can ask for help"
-"There's always room for one more"

And as a bonus, I love asking kids "Do you need privacy or company?"

I hope these mantras serve the children that you teach well. You can choose a few of these phrases that you find meaningful to work into your teaching practice. You could also choose one to go along with your teaching objectives or themes for the month. 

We're not going for quantity, rather quality and repetition so that the children in your care can use these words to return back to themselves, re-wire their thinking, and boost their self-worth.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation and Kids Yoga

I'll never forget the day I watched my kids' first "competitive" soccer game (read: it wasn't competitive at all). I laughed out loud as parents got visibly upset as their kids continued to lose. I was this close  to screaming "LISA!!! THEY'RE 4!! THE GOAL IS TO HAVE FUN!"

Fast forward to a few summers ago when I read Alfie Kohn's book Unconditional Parenting. The book taught me to move away from controlling behaviour through reward and punishment. Instead, it suggested I should be supportive and love my child for who they are, not what they do. It stressed maintaining connection over demanding compliance, ensuring children feel loved regardless of their behaviour or performance. It opened my mind to the way our society is extrinsically motivated and how we suppress any intrinsic motivation from a young age. 

I think about these concepts every time I have to extrinsically motivate my children to not watch tv and do their chores. Recently this got me thinking about yoga for kids and how it inherently supports intrinsic motivation. 

Yoga is one of the few activities around today that is truly non-competitive at it's core. Non-competitive sports are hard to come by in our world, but incorporating them into your life will help release the pressure valve on your family.

Here's why non-competitive activities like yoga are critical for kids: 

• They reduce anxiety - Instead of the constant pressure and anxiety around performance, yoga is for the person who's doing it, not for anyone else to see.

• They build greater self-awareness - Yoga begs us to go inside to notice feeling and what our body is saying. There's no way for this to be measured extrinsically, it's impossible! 

• They make embodiment possible - Embodiment is living through the sensory experience of the body. We can't practice embodiment when being told what to do. Yoga fuels embodiment because kids tune into themselves. They listen to and believe in their own bodies.

And finally, non-competitive activities keep intrinsic motivation intact. I want to raise children to do things because they want to do them, don't you? We don't want to raise our kids in a machine where everything they do is to avoid a punishment and gain a reward. This is in essence living lives that are divorced from their internal knowing and desires, and leads to a whole host of other struggles and issues down the road.

Being intrinsically motivated is linked to higher joy in life, longer-term satisfaction in the activity, and less burnout. But unfortunately, in our world today, kids don't have many spaces where this intrinsic motivation is fostered.

The next time you have a choice between signing your kid up for baseball, gymnastics, or curling, I hope you'll do it and also balance it out with an intrinsically motivated activity!  Some of my favourites are yoga, martial arts, hiking and rock climbing.  

If you're looking to get your kids into yoga, Appleseed is teaching FREE Yoga Storytime classes from now through the summer at Toronto Public Library branches across Toronto. It's a great way to get a taste of what we do.

Books: the fool-proof way to teach kids yoga

Are you aware of how EASY and FLAWLESS it is to teach kids yoga with the aid of an existing storybook?

At Appleseed, we structure ALL our classes to the format of a story, whether they're for babies, toddlers, kids, tweens or teens. And let me be clear, using a story format is not the same as using a storyBOOK. But authors are smart - and we can use their genius to help build our classes. Starting your kids yoga teaching practice by using existing books is a great way to practice integrating a story format. From there, pretty soon the flow, structure and arc of your classes will consistently and thoroughly follow a story. And kids will love them.

(If you've read any toddler story, most of the time they start with waking up, then go about their day and meet some friends, and end with going to sleep! It's literally a yoga class before your very eyes.)

Over the years I've used the brilliance of many kids authors to set up my classes, and I want to share a few of the BEST ones here with you. These classes capture kids' attention like no other, and ALWAYS get them wanting to come back to yoga. 

1) Fire Rescue Class to the book Fire Engine No. 9 by Mike Austin

In this book there are very few words, and one action on each page which quite literally translates to a yoga pose! Linked together they become a story through the stages of a fire rescue. It's immaculate! Check out the lesson plan I created for it here.

2) Change Is Good Class to the book A Colour of His Own by Leo Leonni

In this story a chameleon wants to find his own colour, but to do so tries on the colours of all his friends, which we do the poses to! It's set up beautifully for movement and creativity and leaves you tired enough to rest at the end. Try the lesson plan here.

3) Dinosaurs! Class to the book Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Byron Barton

This book takes you through witnessing the main types of dinosaurs from long ago, and easily lets you bring in the dino lifecycle too. I love it because it's short and simple. Find out how I do it here. 

The beautiful thing with using these books in a toddler or preschool class is that this age group LOVES repetition. I oftentimes act out the entire book as the main part of the class, and then sit down with them and read the pages in a mini storytime at the end They repeat the poses through the storytime and then lay down to rest so dang proud of themselves.

If you enjoy these classes, please let me know! And I hope this inspires you to head out to your favourite library or bookstore to grab some awesome books to support your classes. Your students will thank you.

For the kids,
Megan

P.S. A great book to add to your library is mine if you haven't already! Grab your copy here or ask your local bookstore to bring it in - you'll support a family who really appreciates it. xx

Were You Read to as a Child?

Have you ever realized that you're pendulum parenting completely subconsciously? This happened to me a little while ago. 

I was sitting in front of my publisher for a marketing interview and he was popping questions off to me. I am not a slouch and was very well prepared for all of them, except this one:

"What books were read to you as a child?"

I was completely stopped in my tracks. "Ummmmmmmmm..."

I realized right then and there that my parents never read to me as a child. Ever. 

Now, truth be known, I was the third born (my closest sibling is 9 years older than me) and as we all know, youngest kids usually don't have many baby photos, or a baby memory book (in fact my mom gave me my blank book from 1983 when my first was born to use - ha!), and in my case weren't read to.

What immediately came to mind were some of my favourite books I read in school and as a tween: Goblins in the Castle, The Hobbit, James and the Giant Peach, but there were literally no picture books that I could recall from my pre-reading days or primary years. It was like I started reading books when I could read! It was shocking and saddening. 

Then I realized maybe that's why I read to my kids at nauseum alllllll the children's literature classics. And why I still take them to libraries all over town. In fact, I got 7 copies of Goodnight Moon when my first was born and had never seen the cover before in my life. Heck my mom bought me a copy of I'll Love Your Forever when I was in my 20s because she had just realized how moving it was - I hadn't seen it before in my life.

I'm so glad my publisher asked me that question, even through it hurts my heart a little. Pendulum parenting is real. And so now I have a collection of children's books that is close to 300 strong that my own kids grew up reading (and also can be used in our yoga classes).

So, this whole ordeal has got me wondering - What were your favourite books from childhood??? Were you read to as a child? I'd love to know.

- xx Megan

15 Ways to Integrate Kids Yoga into Your School Day

Growing up, ALL my close friends became classroom teachers. My Dad was a teacher for 35 years and my Mom worked for the school board. For most of my life, I was surrounded by teachers day and night. (I actually didn't know the regular world worked through the summer until I was 10!)

Classroom teachers will always have my heart. And I firmly believe (especially today) they need ALL the support they can get. This is why I've made a list of 15 ways classroom teachers can integrate yoga into a school day. Check out some of the crafty things I've come up with below.

15 Ways Classroom Teachers Can Integrate Yoga into a School Day:

1. Begin the morning saying hello to the sun. Right after announcements or the land acknowledgement, have your students reach their arms up to the sky to say good morning to the sun. You can leave it at that or encourage them to bring their hands down to the floor to say good morning to the earth as well. If this gets old, just have them do a good old stretch however feels good to them.

2. Mindful breathing during transitions - Ask your students to consciously take a slow breath in and out. This should be done after putting away the old task and starting the new one.

3. Embodiment Breaks - Have them plant both feet firmly on the floor and feel their feet in their shoes, you can also bring their attention to their hands.

4. Sense Check-In - Ask them to pause and notice one thing they smell and one thing they feel, or one thing they see and one thing they taste.

5. Internal Body Check-In - Pause during the day to ask them to identify one thing they can feel inside their body (interoception).

6. Before a test do a full body shake - They can imagine they're shaking out all the nerves and anxiety, resetting their nervous system for the task ahead. They can shake out all the stuff they don't need to remember and keep all the important information they've worked so hard to this point to know.

7. Brain Breaks - Get them to stop what they're doing and do a more complex yoga pose. This will be most helpful if the head is below the heart, and shaking or balance poses are most effective. Ex: jellyfish: forward fold and shake, triangle pose, pyramid pose, side bends, warrior 3).

8. Weekly Mantras - "I am learning", "I can make mistakes", "This feels hard because it is hard", "I am proud of myself", "I will keep trying". You could institute Mantra Moments where they come back to the mantra and repeat it to themselves 3 times when they need to.

9. Have a basket of fidgets in the room that children can get if they need something to do with their hands. Trust that they will use them appropriately.

10. Have them keep a gratitude journal and add one thing each day at the end of the day.

11. Have them keep a trigger and calm journal (both in the same book). Each time they're triggered they write down what caused it. Then they write down how their nervous system recalibrated afterwards (calm).

12. Create a calm down corner and a sensory corner - these are two different things. Calm corners have a weighted blanket, pillows, and calm images. Here, stillness is mandatory. A sensory corner has sensory-rich items (silks, feathers, rocks, fidgets, pop-its, worry stones). In sensory corners kids are not required to be still. They are there to regulate themselves.

13. Mindful Story time - read a story or have a child narrate a story and have them do poses/actions throughout.

14. If children are in conflict, encourage them to talk about it themselves. Then have them try a partner pose together afterwards.

15. Body scans - ages 6+ - do brief and simple body scans before or after a transition to a new activity. For example: Close down eyes - I notice my head, my shoulders, my chest, my tummy, my hips, my legs, my feet, my arms, my hands.

I hope these ideas can be helpful for you whether you're a classroom teacher, kids yoga teacher, or work with kids in any other capacity.

And if you want more kids yoga in your classroom, one of our highly-skilled kids yoga teachers is ready for you. Start here.