Celebrating holidays and special events with fireworks is a common practice worldwide. Bright colors, loud pops and bangs, excitement, and awe accompany a fireworks display. We can incorporate the fun and festive feelings of fireworks in our children’s yoga practices. Here’s how:

Firework Breath: Start with palms together down low and as you inhale, open arms out wide and bring palms up high overhead. Clap. On the exhale, say “shhhhhh” and release the hands and let them wiggle and shake on the way back down. This should look like a firework taking off (inhale) and exploding (exhale).

Pompom Fireworks: Pass out a large number of pompoms to each student, as many as they can hold in their hands. Explain that each pompom represents something they are good at and that makes them special and different. Red pompoms are what you love. Green pompoms represent what makes you fortunate. Yellow pompoms each show something that makes you unique. Blue pompoms represent a talent or something you’re good at. Look how many ways you are special! Each student gathers the pompoms into their hands and stands at the front of their mat. Countdown from three and then toss the handfuls into the air, letting them rain down all over. This is just like when you share your good vibes and your talents with other people.

Toe-ga: Now that the pompoms are sprinkled all over, use your toes to clean them up! Challenge students to sort the pompoms into colors or sizes, if you’d like. Kidding Around Yoga has a fun song called Toe-ga you could play while picking up the pompoms with your toes. Then, when the song is over and the pompoms are picked up, instruct students to use the pompoms they collected to make a firework on their mat. You could point out how fireworks sometimes look like mandalas in the sky.

Firework Jumps: One player is the Leader. The rest of the class squats down low. The Leader says, “3-2-1-” and then a standing posture (like Tree, Warrior 1, 2, or 3, star or Goddess).  When the class hears the pose, they jump as high as they can and land in the Leader’s pose. Then it’s another Leader’s turn and the class squats back down low, ready to explode into the next pose.

Freeze Dance: Play Katie Perry’s mega-hit Firework and let the kids free dance. Providing them with colorful scarves adds to the fun and generally encourages children to make their movements bigger. Every once in a while, pause the song. When they hear the song stop, they must freeze in exactly the position they are in. Depending on  the size of your room, number of children playing, and age of participants, you could add challenges or special rules to the dance. For example, when the music stops, they must hop back to their own mat and then freeze in a particular pose. Or they must freeze in the same pose as a partner.

Like what you read here? There’s so much MORE to explore and learn with Kidding Around Yoga. Check out our website for our live and online teacher trainings, Yoga Alliance-approved 95-hour RCYT trainings, specialty online courses, original music, merchandise, and beyond! KAY even offers a 6-hour workshop to share ideas, tips and tricks with children from all nations, races, languages, religions, spiritual traditions, economic backgrounds, political views, ages, genders, sexual orientations, sexual preferences, mental, physical, and conceptual abilities, body sizes, and more (KAY4All)