Kids Aqua Yoga Ideas

Spring is here in Florida and you might be looking for some new things to do with your kids in the pool. The first piece of advice I can give you about kids aqua yoga is keep it light and short. Kids just want to play and splash and have fun in the pool. As long as your yoga plans fit in with that, it will go swimmingly.

Kids Aqua Yoga ideas:

Partner poses – Each pair of two needs a noodle. They each hold the noodle in one hand and have to stay connected as they move through a series of postures. It’s even more silly to ask them to stick their big toes in one end of the noodle and ask them to stay connected in that way.

Inversions – Unlike adults, the kids love practicing handstands, scorpion, down dog, and legs up the wall.

Pranayama – Who can stay underwater and make the biggest bubbles blowing out air. The kids love taking turns being the judge.

Candle meditation – The kids really got a kick out of a floating candle. Knowing it would blow out if submerged, they settled down well to do a brief trataka meditation.

These are some kids aqua yoga games I’ve used:

Pool Noodle Jousting – The kids ride one noodle and the other is their lance. They ‘trot’ around on their noodles and try and knock each other off.

Arch fish – Form two lines facing. Each person holds up one end of a noodle forming a lined archway. Each yogi fish gets to swim through. That’s what’s shown in the picture above.

Royalty trust circle – The king and queen are in the center of a circle with their eyes closed. They fall but the peasants on the outside catch them and set them back upright.

Lobster races – The kids put one noodle behind their back under their armpits. They have to swim backward and the fastest wins.

Floating yoga stations – Paint some boat fenders in different colors. Tether the fenders to buckets filled with rocks so they float on the surface but don’t float away. They have to perform a certain posture at each station.

Follow the leader – One person is in charge and picks the poses. They move through the pool and everyone else follows along.

Yogi freeze tag – The shark swims around, if the shark tags you, you become seaweed (tree pose) until you’re unfrozen.

Thread the needle – Form any of the yogi standing postures so each person is pointing towards the center of the circle. The kids can take turns swimming through the circle of legs. You can give out prizes to the person who can make it the farthest.

A few more kids aqua yoga tidbits:

Of course, keep it age-appropriate. For the little ones, we practiced three postures, played a yoga posture based game, did one more posture and then a splashy loud game. Teens can handle a bit more mindfulness to their movement and a bit longer practice spiced up with some fun too of course. They loved trying to cannonball into a circle of noodles.

kids in the pool doing aqua yoga — Teens doing tree pose with noodle branches.

There aren’t any yoga teacher trainings for kids aqua yoga so these are adaptations of games I’ve used with kids on land that I’ve adapted for use in the pool. Feel free to comment with ideas you’ve used. Have a happy yoga filled Spring!