Cranston mom Alison Grieco is a substitute teacher by day and a yoga instructor for kids by night. Walk into Focus Yoga studio in East Greenwich on any given Monday or Tuesday night, and you can find her leading a circle of children in the downward dog position.

“Kids’ yoga is more fun than adult yoga,” Grieco said. “I once taught an adult yoga class and I taught them to do the crow pose the way I teach my kids and a woman came up to me and said she’d never been able to do it before, until that night when I taught her the way I teach kids.”

If her children, Nick and Gabby are any indication, kids catch on quickly. Both are students at Glen Hills Elementary School.

Grieco has been teaching yoga to kids for several years, even working the after-school program circuit in Cranston and throughout the state

She teaches kids how to stretch, relax and breathe, playing games that simultaneously exercise often neglected parts of their bodies, right down to their toes. One game Grieco likes to play is crab soccer, where each student has to get into the crab position and play soccer with just their feet, tossing a ball back and forth between them.

“I am also teaching ‘pre-season’ yoga at Providence Country Day School to some of their winter athletes,” Grieco said. “This idea of doing yoga in the pre-season for sports is a concept that many pro leagues are adopting so that the players come into the season stronger, more flexible and more focused.”

She says that the older students get different things out of the classes than the younger students do.

“They approach the relaxation aspect of it differently. We do journal writing based on the yoga positions, they like that a lot,” she said. “I think they enjoy the mind-body relaxation the most because they don’t often get to relax.”

Grieco has been at the Focus studio for two years, which owner Katherine Conte says has been a positive addition. The studio recently received two of Rhode Island Monthly magazine’s “Best of Rhode Island” awards, one for best yoga studio and one for best-specialized class, which is yoga for the deaf.

“I think Alison is fantastic. She’s very gifted with children and makes yoga a lot of fun,” Conte said. “At the same time they’re having fun, the kids are learning the fundamental skills of yoga. She makes it light and playful so that the kids are attracted to it.”

Grieco ends each yoga class with a period of quiet relaxation called Savasana. She has the children lay on their yoga mats quietly, with the lights turned down and soft music playing in the background.

“It’s our period of rest because we’ve just worked our bodies really hard and we need a rest,” Grieco explains to the students. “The lights are low to make you rest. No one will touch you or come near you. This is your safe place, a time to rest and be quiet.”

Grieco circulates around the room as the students wind down, watching them on their mats, smiling to herself as they put on their most relaxed faces.

“Hug your body, thank your body for all of the work it did today,” Grieco instructs the class.

Each yoga lesson ends the same way, with everyone saying the word Namaste, which, as Grieco explains, means, “Everything that’s good inside of me honors and respects everything that’s good inside of you.”

Focus Yoga Studio is located on South County Trail and Grieco teaches her classes for kids on Mondays and Tuesdays from 4 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit their Web site at www.focusyoga.com.