YogaMORE: A magic resource. Imagine a resource you could use in the classroom or during therapy sessions. This magic resource can help encourage social distancing, assist with classroom management, provide active play and gross motor movement. This resource can most often be theme-related, so students are actively engaged while you teach. This resource can be used inside or outdoors, and can provide a change in mood or calm an anxious group.

In addition this resource can be easily used for distance learning, and can then just as easily go back to a classroom setting. Not only that, but can also be used by students’ families.

You have probably guessed, it’s yoga. As mentioned in other posts, I can feel the anxiety increase in reading others’ feelings as school quickly approaches. I really felt the stress and pressure on my teacher friends and I wanted to be able to help. I sincerely hope the things we have been working on over the summer can help you — whether you are a parent, caregiver, teacher, therapist, or preschool director.

Here are a few things that you may find different with our products:

Over the summer I worked diligently to convert every single yoga pose card deck to horizontal cards. I realized using the cards digitally in my own classes, that horizontal cards work so much better. The entire card fits on the screen at once with less scrolling, plus the images and text are larger. It’s just all around better.

I even converted some of our popular posters to horizontal slides so teachers can use those digitally as well, especially if needed for distance learning:

 

All of our pose cards are user-friendly for the classroom AND for distance learning. This can be a wonderful constant for your students, to know that no matter where they are for school, they can always have yoga. It’s a great bonding activity for you and the students as well as for students and their families at home. I’ve had several teachers and therapists message me how much fun they had doing yoga with their students and not only that, it was fun to see siblings and family members join in too.

We also have a new product line that we are really excited about. A teacher friend of mine collaborated with me and we developed something MORE. We call it YogaMORE. This product line can help support YOU while also benefiting and teaching your students. We came up with yoga pose card decks that have ONLY individual poses, no partner or group poses/activities. We wanted to encourage safety first and children being able to do poses independently was crucial. Don’t worry. We still have our original pose card decks and many of them do have partner and class poses and activities still in them. If you use those this year, you can just skip over the partner and group pose cards.

The YogaMORE line also contains resources with social emotional lesson plans. We are constantly adding to this group of products because the focus this year for many schools across the country will be making sure everyone is okay emotionally as well as physically. Some of these will have yoga, some not. Others will have activity sheets and other task cards to accompany a book or specific theme. For younger children, they can draw pictures, for older children, they can use these for writing activities. They also make excellent talking points at home.

Our YogaMORE line also has eliminated the creative/sensory component that is in many of our Yogalore card decks and lesson plans. We felt this was safer and necessary for our students. Instead, we have added a STEM/STEAM activity after the Rest & Relax component in the YogaMORE card decks. Often times these activities can be done independently and are less “touchy” and “germy”.

Our focus has changed. Along with social emotional learning, YogaMORE will focus more on self-regulation, calming and de-stressing (primarily using breathing techniques and calming poses). We have more guided visualization exercises and do more with our Rest & Relax component. Many of the guided visualization starters encourage children to better express themselves and also supports writing activities for older children.

We want the YogaMORE line of products to not just help teachers with teaching and emotionally nurturing their students, but we are also hoping these products help the grown ups using them. Yoga brings calm. Yoga brings relief. Yoga brings something you and your students can depend on.

Be sure to check out our products on TeachersPayTeachers.

I hope everyone has an amazing year this year.