I’m always trying to find new ways to involve my kids in yoga. I love that they can improve their strength, flexibility, and mindfulness in their practice. Kids are not immune to stress and I want to give mine the tools they need to navigate the challenges they face like increasing expectations at school, navigating social issues, and feeling confident in their skin and abilities.
Both of my older kids have become so flexible from doing yoga that they are so close to full splits, and they love showing me how much closer they get every day! They have a weekly kids yoga class that they attend and we often do yoga together at home. I do yoga while they’re around and most of the time they will just join in without any encouragement, but I love incorporating fun yoga activities like this easy yoga dice game using dry erase dice.
I homeschool my kids over summer break, which they love. I had these dice for our homeschooling and we decided to use them for a fun yoga game this week which was a huge success.
It’s really simple. My kids get to pick out their favorite poses and write them down on each side of the cube. My five year old can’t write yet, so I had her draw stick figure pictures of her favorite poses. Tree, cobra, and down dog always make the list. Then we just took turns rolling the dice and holding each pose - easy peasy. Get the same pose twice in a row and let the laughter ensue! We kept playing and it lasted for a great 30-minute session. Even my 17-month old joined us for that long! She may not have done all the poses, but we held her attention and she had a lot of fun with it.
I even got my 5 and 7-year-olds to meditate at the end of the game! We turned off all the lights, and I wrapped each child up in a yoga mat all the way up and called them hot dogs. I told them to close their eyes and if any of my hot dogs moved I would come and eat them up! They did great! They meditated for maybe 5 minutes which I thought was a really long time to expect for their ages.
These are the dry erase dice we used on amazon, but you can get them just about anywhere.
I think the biggest thing that helped my kids develop a love for yoga is having a mom who loves yoga so much, and seeing me practice yoga so often (they even like checking out my blog!). We also incorporate yoga story books (our favorite at the moment is Good Morning Yoga), and yoga cards (we use Yoga Poses for Kids Cards). There are also a number of great youtube channels that put out yoga videos for kids, including my son’s current favorite, a Cosmic Kids Yoga Pokemon Yoga Class. My daughter loves their Frozen Yoga Class.
I love seeing how much fun my kids have with yoga. They naturally challenge themselves and thoroughly enjoy the entire process. They are definitely calmer after a good session, it helps them to center themselves. I find that it helps them sleep better too. When one of them is having trouble going to sleep at the end of the day we often do yoga in bed to help them relax. There are so many benefits they receive from their fun yoga practice. For more on this, see my post on 40 Benefits of Yoga Practice.
I hope you and your family enjoy doing this easy yoga game as much as we did!
Namaste.