Looking for a fun way to bond with your kids? Try out these kid yoga poses and build a story based on the different yoga positions with your kids. The story can be as silly or adventurous as you like!
Building creativity skills and imagination isn’t always about arts and crafts or reading stories. Kids can move and be active in their pretend play to make their creative time even more fun and beneficial.
Kid yoga poses are similar to yoga for adults, but with an element of imagination. They mimic objects or living things that your kids are familiar with so your kids can refer to a mental picture while doing the pose. They are a great way to calm your kid’s nerves and help decrease stress.
Yoga for kids is one way that kids and adults can play and move together and build that creative muscle while staying active. Keep yourself and your kids healthy physically and mentally with fun yoga poses for kids!
Benefits of Yoga for Kids
Yoga is a great way to get kids moving in a new way, which develops coordination skills and builds mirror neurons. Some yoga poses can be trickier for kids little kids at the beginning, so don’t worry about them getting the exact yoga positions perfect. As long as they are trying, you will see improvements as they practice.
Doing yoga poses helps kids with:
- Concentration
- Bilateral coordination
- Muscle memory
- Balance
- Strength
- Creativity and imagination
- And more!
Practicing yoga is also a great stepping stone to trying mindfulness with kids, since once they get the hang of the poses you can add in breathing exercises and meditation. Mindfulness is an excellent skill to have for kids to work on emotional regulation.
How is Yoga Helpful for Building Kids’ Creativity?
Many yoga poses are already named after animals, and many more poses can easily be turned into animals or characters. Use these to encourage kids to play pretend by trying some animal shaped yoga poses. Once in each pose, you can do a little movement or make some animal sounds.
After they know several animal kids yoga poses, you can start to put them together in animal stories. Pretend to be a dog and go on an animal adventure, meeting other animals (and doing the poses) along the way.
Creative animal yoga adventures don’t have to make perfect sense. A silly animal yoga pose story might sound like this (poses in bold):
- “Once there was a Dog….
- He met a Cat and wanted to play.
- But the cat ran away so the Dog found a Cow.
- The Cow was busy eating so the dog did some big jumps over a Fence (tabletop) and went all the way to the forest.
- In the forest, he came to a Tree. It was a really tall tree so he sat and barked at it for a while.
- Finally, an Eagle woke up to hear what all the fuss was about. He told the Dog to go find another Tree.
- The Dog went to another Tree (balance on your other foot!) and barked again.
- A Squirrel (low squat) came running down and wanted to play!
- They played and played together all the way to a Waterfall (legs up the wall).
- After a long day, they were tired and lay down to rest (Savasana).”
It may just be a short adventure, but the sound of a story and the excitement of imagining will keep your kids entertained and occupied longer than you can come up with ideas for the story!
It’s always good to let your child contribute as well, it makes the story even sillier and more creative.
If there is an animal your child wants to do but there isn’t a matching yoga pose, make one up! Help them be creative with the shape of the animal and the way it moves too.
Animal Yoga Poses for Kids
The best animal yoga poses for kids are the ones they want to try! Many yoga poses are already named after animals and things in nature, so you can start with those too.
Here is some good kid yoga poses that are animal-themed (and nature-themed) so they are perfect for making up creative story adventures.
Dog Pose
Cat Pose
Cow Pose
Cobra Pose
Tree Pose
Frog Pose
Enjoy doing these yoga poses with your kids for a fun creative and imaginative movement activity. Be sure to start and end your yoga practice with a few deep cleansing breaths as well to get more oxygen to those muscles and lungs.
Have fun!
This is a guest post by Maia. Maia is the owner and creator of Kumarah Kid’s Yoga, an online resource for parents, educators, and social workers to learn about yoga and mindfulness for kids. You can find tips for teaching kids yoga and mindfulness, printable yoga cards, mindfulness breathing exercises, and kids yoga lesson plans all on her website at KumarahYoga.com
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