Frog Pose
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Frog pose is the ideal ‘wake up’ for the brain. If your child is feeling drowsy in the morning, a few frog jumps, will help them become alert for the day.
How to do frog pose
To avoid bumps and knocks, create a ‘safe yoga space’ for you and your child: a non-slip, level comfy mat or an area of carpet and an obstruction free area around you with no sharp corners or breakable objects.
Take off your socks and shoes. It is far better to do crab pose with bare feet. With bare feet your child will slip less and will be able to do the pose accurately. Interestingly we rely on sensory information passed up through the soles of feet to balance.
Squat down. Place hands on the mat in front to steady.
Do a few bounces to prepare
Then, 1, 2, 3, jump up high reaching above your head to ‘touch the sky’
Benefits of Frog Pose
Frog pose gives your child the chance to:
Strengthen their ‘core’ muscles. As your child jumps up from squatting, taking their arms above their head they will be strengthening their gluteal (hip), abdominal, spinal and shoulder muscles. These muscle groups aid good posture.
Strengthen their leg muscles. Jumping will strengthen your child’s quadriceps (thigh), hamstrings, calf, ankle and foot muscles. Your child will be using their own body as a natural weight to ‘work’ these muscles.
Improve their sense of balance. Staying still in the squatting position for a few seconds will challenge your child’s sense of balance.
Raise their ‘levels of alertness’. Jumping in frog pose will stimulate your child’s vestibular sense.
A More Challenging frog pose
Have a go at being a frog, by a pond, at first hiding then jumping. On a soft floor surface or mat, start by curling up really small taking your chin to your knees to be a frog hiding under a lily leaf. Then move up into the squatting position. Try to balance in this position for a few seconds – you can even stick out your tongue to be a frog ‘catching flies’! Start to bounce and then – JUMP! See if you can do four frog jumps in a row before having a rest on the floor.
Frog pose variations & games
Use fabric squares, ideally green, as ‘lily pads’. Guide your child to squat or crouch down low seeing if they can balance their ‘lily pad’ on their head. Then 1, 2, 3, jump – watch the lily pad fall off!