If you are expecting to pick up a serious yoga regimen from this post, you may be disappointed. If you are looking for a fun new way to spend time with your kids, you’re in the right place. (This post contains affiliate links.)

I bought my first yoga mat over 10 years ago. It has moved with me 6 different times (my husband would be happy to verify that for you). I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve used it for yoga. It does, however, make really good packing material for fragile items. If you ever have to sleep on an air mattress, it’s wonderful to put between you and the mattress for a layer of warmth. It also works as a thin therm-a-rest to protect you when you’re sitting or lying on the ground.

Clearly when my 4 year old daughter told me she wanted to try yoga a couple of weeks ago, it was NOT because of anything she saw her mom doing… Unless “yoga” means “food” in another language, but then she definitely would not have been interested in that. Regardless, I took it as an opportunity to spend some quality time with the kids and try something new.

You want to do what?

We headed off Target where we bought two new yoga mats, because obviously my old one wasn’t worthy of actually doing yoga on. We got home, found a cute Storyland Yoga Video to rent on Amazon, and spent A FULL HOUR doing yoga together. She loved it! The video was perfect for keeping her 4 year old short attention span engaged. It made the whole yoga “routine” (I’m sure no one would actually call it a “routine”, but I am going to) a fun adventure, turning all the moves into a part of a story.

Later on when when her dad got home, she was trying to show him all the cool things she had learned. I don’t know if she couldn’t remember the names of the poses, or just didn’t care, but she started coming up with her own yoga poses that really were quite ingenious:

Yoga Positions From the Eyes of a 4 Year Old

My personal favorite is “Upward Ostrich”. As you can see, we were not about having proper technique, or following all the rules, we were about having fun and spending time together. I thought that after the first time she would be bored with it. Quite the contrary, she could not get enough!

On Saturday mornings she gets both of our mats out, lays them out next to each other, and INSISTS we do our weekend yoga while her little brother is napping  (although when he is around he gets into it as well):

It’s been a fun little activity that we can all enjoy together when the weather’s too yucky to go outside. It’s silly, fun, creative, active, and though I’m sure none of it is really “traditional” yoga, we get some good stretching and exercise in.

It just goes to show, you don’t need to spend a ton of money on memberships or classes that force you to be somewhere at a certain time, when that’s the last thing you want to do on the weekends. You’re encouraging your kids to be active, and end up getting a little exercise yourself… Especially if your kids are anything like mine and insist you do everything that they do, and for the same length of time. I’m seriously amazed I’m not 100 pounds lighter, but that’s for another post.

What fun activities do you do with your kids?