Yoga on the Farm

After spending my Memorial Day weekend with friends up in Hadley, MA who live on a lot of farmland, I was inspired. We went for ice cream to a working dairy farm called Flayvors of Cook farm that had chickens and cows which gave the kids such a sense of where their ice cream came from! I loved it. The farm sells an ice cream called Hadley Grass in which they use the local asparagus. Hadley was once called the "asparagus capital of the world" because of how fertile their soil is for growing asparagus. The wheels started turning in my brain while we enjoyed the cows and the ice cream. I love to take a real experience and then create a class out of it. 

I taught a lot of preschool classes this week which makes teaching about the farm so much fun. Preschoolers love the farm! Most of my classes were either 20-30 minutes, though one I did was about 45 minutes. 

1) Drive your car: We start by getting into our tractor, hold onto the steering wheel and move our bodies forward and then backward. I noticed that the 3 yr olds have trouble moving their bodies without using their hands, but 4 and 5 yr olds are great at this! Major core action in this move. 

2) We take a giant leap off of our tractors. Let's see how high we can jump! 





In no particular order because it changes with every group based on which animal they saw first.

3) Chicken pose: These feathered friends can't fly like all the other birds out there, but they do like to use their wings to move around. We move up and down from a squat, opening and closing our wings. 

4) Basket pose: What do chickens give us? Eggs! Let's see how many eggs we can fit in our baskets. 

5) Horse pose: We start with pony kicks on our mat. Then we gallop and clip clop our way around the mats. We get back to our stable and move our arms and bodies up and down with a big "Neigh!"

6) Child's pose: What do horses eat? Hay of course! We make our bodies look like bales of hay. I get to be the horse who eats from each bale of hay while giving them a bit of a love press (and tickle) on their backs. 


7) Pig pose: Pigs love to eat and they really love to roll around in the mud. We start on hands and knees like cat but bend our elbows out to eat and oink. Then we roll around in the mud on our backs. 

8) Cat/Cow pose: Of course we find cows on the farm! Our cows are best friends with cats so we do our best moo and meow back and forth from cat to cow pose. 







9) Taking a drink: These cows also give us lots of treats including milk to drink and ice cream to eat. Yum!






10) Sheep or Goat pose: We start in cat pose and lift a leg behind us as we baaaaaa. 


11) Birthday candle: Instead of candle pose, our legs to the sky become the silo filled with food for the animals on the farm. As we count to five, the food comes down and our legs come to the mat getting ready for relaxation. 

12) Relaxation: As we relax, we think about all the animals on the farm, the sounds they make and the smells from the farm. We let all the senses take us to the farm while our bodies relax on our mats. 

Check out some more farm ideas on the Kids Yoga Stories blog! I love to sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm when I do this class with the 2-3 year olds. There are so many books about farm animals out there too! 

What other ideas for the farm theme do you have? Have you taught about the farm with your kids? How do you get inspired by activities you do?