Looking for a fun indoor workout for kids at home? Check out this yoga and ballet inspired activity. It includes 15 exercises, that are not only super easy but also a great fun for kids. In fact, indoor gross motor toddler activities are a must for your toddler’s daily routine in the wintertime.
And if you ask yourself how much exercise does kids need, the answer is pretty clear. Indeed, kids should be active at least 180 minutes a day. Specifically, these 180 minutes should include light, moderate, and vigorous activities. That’s according to physical activity guidelines around the world. Moreover, at least 30 minutes should be a structured physical activity each day and supervised by an adult.
Materials
Basically, you don’t need much for this activity.
Free up some space for enough movement and use our fun activity flashcards, if you like.
You can download them here and print them out in a minute.
Also, you can use a yoga mat or similar, but that’s optional.
Fun Indoor Workout for Kids
In particular, these indoor gross motor activities are great for kids and toddlers between 2 and 7. And here is a short example how it goes with our 2-Year-Old.
The workout can be repeated daily as a part of your toddler’s morning or evening routine or just for fun.
You can use the flashcards and at the same time demonstrate the exercises to your little one.
For me it’s a great thing to do after work, especially if I have skipped my own workout. And it’s great to see him so excited to follow workout instructions.
And here is our workout for kids in short again:
1. Jumping Starfish
Spread your arms and legs and jump like a little starfish.
2. Gorilla
Bend forward and make wide-legged forward jumps like a gorilla.
3. Running Monkey
To illustrate this exercise, imagine a running monkey. Thus, run and wave your hands and arms like a monkey. If you like, you can make the correspondent noises.
4. Sniffing Puppy
That’s basically the puppy pose with a movement variation. From all-fours, take your hands out in front of you while lowering your chest towards the ground. And start stiffing around like a little puppy.
5. Slow Rabbit
From all-fours, take your hands out and make slow jumps like a careless bunny.
6. Superman Pose
As you lie on your belly, extend your legs and arms out. Then lengthen your arms and legs away from your torso. Usually, you need to make sure that your elbows and knees stay straight, but for kids that’s quite hard. Therefore, make some variations like waving your legs in the air.
7. Peeing Dog
Although, the more sophisticated name of this pose is a bent & straight leg fire hydrant, we call it peeing dog. It was certainly easier for me to explain it to my 2-year-old like that.
And it goes like this. From all-fours lift your bent-knee leg out to the side in line with your hip. For the straight-Leg Variation, just straighten your leg out to the side in line with your hip before lifting.
8. Flying Horse
A galloping horse is not enough. It’s so much better to gallop and fly with the wind.
9. Kangaroo Jumps
For this exercise, you need specifically to try to make big jumps while holding your hands in front of you.
10. Walking Crab
Walking crab is a fun exercise that starts with a plié. First, stand with your feet spaced shoulder-wide apart. Second, point your toes outwards. Third, put your arms in the air and make crab claws with your hands. Finally, squat as much as you can and start walking sidewards, forwards and backwards like a real crab.
11. Airplane
That’s a super easy and fun one. Spread your arms like an airplane and start flying around. Make slight variation and be a airplane with propeller.
12. Stomping Elephant
Stomp elegantly like an elephant in a circle and at the same time move your trunk if you like.
13. Ballerina Arabesque Pulses
After the elephant, let’s try to be light like a ballerina. Stand on your toes behind a chair or barre-like furniture. Then let your hands rest on the chair and extend your leg behind you. Try to keep it straight and pulse your leg up and down. Finally, repeat the exercise with the other leg.
14. Ballerina Attitude to side extension
This one is pretty hard, so making some efforts is the right direction is great too. First, stand on one of your legs, and bend slightly your knee. Then, put your hands on your hips and lift your other leg to the side up and across your body. Finally, repeat.
15. Ballerina Variation pointe technique
This is quite hard to do, therefore we will just pretend to be little ballerinas and walk on you tiptoes as elegantly as we can.
16. Fit Chair
Sit on a chair, lift your both legs up and stretch as much as you can.
Looking for more indoor gross motor activities? Check out these 39 gross motor activities or these 12 daily exercises.
Happy Playing!