5 Tips for Teaching Kids Yoga Online

If you haven’t tried it yet, here’s a heads up: teaching kids yoga online is very different than teaching in person! Youth Alliance Yoga’s team of online teachers offer up these five tips for teaching in a way that engages kids and builds positive connections.

1. Keep your backdrop plain and neutral.
   
   Kids are distractible and it can be hard for them to focus on YOU when your background is full of interesting things to examine. We once taught a class in front of a Star Wars poster — big mistake! The kids stood about one inch from their screens squinting and examining the poster for the first five minutes of class (and got up multiple times to give it a closer look throughout class). While it can be fun to THEME classes around things kids love, visuals should be used purposefully and introduced strategically throughout. A neutral background centers YOU and allows kids to focus on your instruction. (Also, PSST! We love your “Fuck the patriarchy” tapestry but that might need to go too… unless you want a first grader asking mom, “What is fuck?”)
   

2. Turn off the chat during direct instruction.

   
   We love kids, but they can be mean. And some kids will be mean (really, really mean) via chat — even if they wouldn’t otherwise in real life. Sadly, we learned this the hard way after many exasperated efforts to moderate the chat — which, for the record, is very hard to do when you are live teaching (too much back and forth to the camera). Despite the norms we set at the start of class, kids who had never even met one other called other kids fat, criticized each other’s clothes, and made snarky remarks about how other peoples’ homes looked. Chat OFF meant that conversation had to be verbal, and this acted as an effective deterrent to some of the nastier chatter. All this said, go right ahead and use chat for brief times of conversation/discussion as needed and helpful for inclusion when you’re able to actively monitor and respond.
   

3. Use clear and direct language.

   Avoid rhetorical questions such as “Are you ready?” or “Would you like to try?” Since you’re not in the room with the kids, they’ll opt in or out regardless of whether you ask. The extra wordiness is distracting and disrupts the flow — especially for young children. Substitute this language with direct language: “Let’s play with tree pose! Stamp your feet into the floor…” And make sure to do the action while you teach it, maintaining eye contact with the camera and speaking in a loud, clear voice. If you want the children to discuss a question with one another or with a sibling/adult at home, be clear about what you are asking. For example, say, “THINK: When is a time you felt balanced? [leave time to think] PAIR: Turn to a partner and take turns sharing your answer /or/ Enter your answer into the chat; SHARE: Raise your hand and I will unmute you to share with the group.”
   

4. Set up two teaching spots in one frame.

   Before you begin, set up your mat with the long end parallel with the back wall and make sure your WHOLE body appears in the frame when you come into your widest, tallest positions (star, upward salute, etc.) Then, make sure you have a chair or stool up close to the camera for when you engage in discussion, do theme setting, share a toy/prop, or read a storybook (and HEY! if you use a storybook, do the kids a favor and present digital images of the pictures in a screen-share so that they can clearly see the pictures and you can read without pulling the book back and forth, having glares on the pages, etc.) Having two teaching spots keeps kids engaged during times of both direct instruction and posture modeling and helps to keep your volume and voice clear throughout.
   

5. Keep your energy up.
   
   Kids get bored with screens pretty quickly when the frame stays the same (which, for most yoga teachers, it must unless you have a studio and a production team). In digital media for kids, the shot and/or scene typically changes about every 8 seconds — in most SpongeBob episodes, the scene changes roughly every 11 seconds; in Caillou it’s about every 34 seconds. If you wanted to teach a one-hour yoga class that resembled typical children’s programming, you’d have to change scenes 450 times! Obviously that is not possible. So you’ll need to be quite the entertainer! Bring a smile, big energy, and several activities to do throughout the class to keep kids engaged.

Which tip do you plan to incorporate into your next online kids yoga class?
Would you like more coaching in this area? Check out our Online Children’s Yoga Teacher Training, which equips you to teach in person and online!