Refine Your Teaching, Include Creativity & Family Yoga

Step 3 strengthens your ability to teach real yoga in real time, not from a script, but from skill. You’ll learn to recognize the five universal elements in yourself and your students, and how to teach on the level of energy so that they feel seen and supported. This training helps you shift from trying to control behavior to guiding energy. That’s the core of our Elemental Conduct™ classroom management strategy: reading the room, noticing what’s needed, and offering practices that bring students into balance. You’ll refine how you use voice, breath, language, and pacing to lead a group while staying connected to each child.

What’s Included

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to take Steps 1 and 2 before Step 3?

Step 1 is the prerequisite for Step 3. Please inquire about any exceptions. Step 3 focuses on refining your teaching, working with the five elements, and our Elemental Conduct™ classroom-management approach.

How long is Step 3 and when does it meet?

Step 3 is 22 training hours held over a single weekend, Friday evening through Sunday late afternoon. You’ll find current dates in the registration section below.

Does Step 3 count toward certification and CEUs?

Yes. The four Steps together make up our 95-hour certification, which is registered with Yoga Alliance for the 95-hour RCYT (Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher) designation, and as a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider our trainings count as continuing education hours for registered yoga teachers. For educators, counselors and therapists it depends on your district or your licensing board, so check with them and we will provide all the necessary documentation. Graduate level credit is offered separately through our partner Courses4Teachers.

What are common challenges when teaching yoga to kids, and how do I handle them?

Kids yoga teachers often face overstimulation, inconsistent energy, classroom layout limitations, and attention span dips. At Grounded Kids, we teach “teaching to what you see”: using observation over assumption, redirecting rather than correcting, and pausing to adjust.

Use tools like chimes for reset cues, name tags for connection, and mats placed in rows for calm containment. Your tone, presence, and responsiveness will set the energetic tone far more than perfection in your lesson plan.

How do I keep kids focused and engaged during a yoga session?

Grounded Kids Yoga teaches you to tune into student energy and lead from presence. Use name plates, music cues, visual aids, and call-and-response patterns to maintain rhythm. Alternate between movement and stillness, and always make eye contact when giving directions.

Elemental Conduct helps you respond to each child’s unique constitution: Fire children crave precision, Water children need comfort, Air children want movement, and so on. Balance structure with creativity, and redirect energy instead of fighting it.

What’s the best way to structure a kids yoga class?

A Grounded Kids Yoga class follows a consistent rhythm that helps students feel safe, focused, and successful. Start by gathering the group and introducing your theme, then guide them through a Tune In ritual like chanting OM or a bija mantra as shown in our Superheroes curriculum. From there, lead warm-ups, a sequence of theme-aligned poses, cool-downs, and a resting pose. Every class ends with a closing ritual that brings the experience full circle.

We emphasize repetition, play, and heart-based instruction. Pose flows can be built around adventure, stillness, laughter, or storytelling. Include chants, games, partner work, or projects as time allows. Music choices should support the class energy, from calming to energizing. Whether you teach in a classroom, studio, or outside, this structure helps your students and you stay grounded.
Download our lesson plan template

What are the most effective warm-up and cool-down activities for children?

Effective warm-ups include rhythmic mini flows, movements that warm the spine and prepare the body and mind for practice, and call-and-response sequences that engage the breath and body. Start with repetition, build into flow, and focus on fun, engaging language.

Cool-downs can include partner games like The Bell Game and Ball Breath, gentle breath-based movement, and Resting Pose with guided imagery. Children thrive when transitions between energetic peaks and quiet grounding are deliberate and consistent.

During training you will experience our 5 go-to warm-up poses and 5 go-to cool-down poses perfect for every class. You may get bored, but they won’t!

How can I incorporate storytelling, music, and games into kids yoga?

Storytelling and music are essential parts of our method. Use books that teach heart virtues and build a yoga sequence around the story’s arc. Let children embody characters and create mini flows. We are proud to know the brilliant Kira Willey and enthusiastically recommend her music.

Games like Musical Mats or Be The Bubble teach listening, regulation, and collaboration while keeping energy joyful. With repetition, stories and songs become grounding rituals that shape the emotional arc of class.

What are some beginner friendly yoga themes to use with children?

For little ones, try themes like Good Morning, Holidays, Grounded Superheroes, The Forest Adventure, or Kings and Queens of the Trees. Grounded Kids offers lesson plans that build from story to sequence, using familiar rituals, routines and repetition to support learning. These are all part of our teacher training manuals.

For elementary to high school ages, themes help anchor heart virtues and alignment actions in a way that sticks. When universal themes are used well, they become personal. Always tie it back to what yoga teaches us. For example:

• Ride the Wave: Flow with Your Feelings. Yoga teaches us that feelings are like visitors to welcome and they don’t stay forever.
• Commitment: What Do You Stand For? Yoga teaches us to stay true to our values.

Use music, books, and pose flows that reflect your theme and adjust based on age, energy, and classroom needs.

Why this works, and what the studies actually found: Evidence-Based Yoga in Schools: What the Research Shows.

Teaching siblings or a mixed-age group? What works at each stage, from toddlers through middle school: Kids Yoga by Age.

Where Step 3 sits. The full pathway and how to take it from anywhere: children’s yoga certification online.

Our Graduates Speak For Themselves