Game of the Month: Yoga Spinner

There are few indoor games which gets bodies moving as well as brains thinking so you can bet that when I find an active indoor game that my kids enjoy we play it as much as possible. ThinkFun's Yoga Spinner has been fitting the bill lately and I have been pleasantly surprised at how much my sons have enjoyed playing it. Especially as I couldn't get them to a yoga class if my life depended on it.

Note: ThinkFun sent us a game to try out.

About Yoga Spinner:

Yoga Spinner, played by two or more players, consists of a substantial plastic spinner and four decks of cards: red, blue, green and white. Taking turns, players spin the arrow to determine which card to draw. They attempt to perform the yoga position depicted on the card. If they are successful, they get to keep the card. The first player to collect one card of each color wins.

Tips for playing Yoga Spinner

• Old ladies with bad knees like me may find that some positions are impossible, but hey, I don't mind passing my turn if warranted. So be prepared.
• We found that it is good to be a little bit lenient when it came to deciding if someone had performed the position exactly as depicted (see the above qualification!).
• Some of the positions on the partner cards are impossible with two people of very different sizes (think parent and small child). When that happened, we simply drew another card.
• As an alternative to the official Yoga Spinner rules, we set a time limit. So instead of playing until one person had collected the necessary cards, we would play for 15 minutes (or so) and whoever collected the most cards won.
• You can also make this a non-competitive game by playing for a set amount of time or playing until all players have collected 4 cards, or one card of each color.

Why you should play Yoga Spinner

As I said above, this is an active indoor game. Getting the kids to move their bodies in a controlled manner when trapped inside on bad weather days is always a challenge for me, and I bet it is for you, too. Yoga stretches bodies, improves gross motor skills and coordination. The fact that so many of the positions twist up the body like a pretzel makes kids laugh as they try and complete them. So it not only gets the muscles moving, it gets the smiles coming and we all know happy children as contented children.

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