Rainy Day Play: Kiddie Yoga

  

Unless you are blessed with an outdoor undercover area, or unlimited access to a playcentre (or the dosh to go to one a few times a week) keeping active kids ... um, active ... in wet weather can be quite a task. Normally, a few hours at the park or going for a walk with the kids is just the ticket, and a bit of drizzle is no barrier to those activities either, but a downpour? Oy vay. 

Today, I decided to try kids yoga with my girls. In theory, it should stretch their muscles and give them some physical activity in a calming way (instead of an excitable way - like trampolines, or running, etc), and be indoors-friendly. In practice, it was a success! 

The You Tube video we attempted was
from Cosmic Kids

Initially, I played a You Tube video on my laptop and we copied the poses, but Ava quickly became bored and started spinning in circles on the spot. Eden persevered for a while, but eventually gave up and joined Ava. Hmm. I think if we had been able to view these videos on the TV we would have been able to follow it better, as I was always adjusting the laptop screen so that we could see it sitting, then standing, then sitting, then standing, and the sound was poor so we were straining to hear.

Our second attempt was more successful. After googling images of 'kids yoga poses', we copied the poses from a couple of pics for about twenty minutes. I chose the animal poses because we could pretend to be those animals and have animal conversations: with girls, everything talks all the time. ALL THE TIME. This was great! The girls got right into it, and were actually really good at the poses - even some of the trickier ones like 'Flamingo' and 'Boat'. There were lots of animal noises, wobbles, tumbles (me), and giggles all round.

Given my daughters' enthusiasm, I will be trying to incorporate some yoga time into our days, maybe as a bit of a wind down just before we have Quiet Time. I am going to see if I can do that thing where you link your computer to the telly and play the videos from there. Yup, I'm such a tech wiz! If you are interested in trying yoga out with your little ones, the clips we used were from Cosmic Kids - the lady is easy to listen to and makes the yoga poses into something of a role playing game. Find it here. If you want to learn more about the benefits of yoga for your child, check out this link at Babble.

Thanks for reading! ~ L.