With childhood obesity on the rise, it’s now more important than ever to encourage your children to be active. However, this can be very difficult thanks to the popularity of video games, tablets, and smartphones. Which encourage children and adult to be sedentary. So, how do you make exercise fun for your kids?
Healthy Activities for Families
Here are some of the best ideas.
Introduce them to a new sport
Sports make exercise enjoyable by encouraging our competitive streaks. If your kids find exercise boring, then maybe this just means they haven’t found a sport they enjoy yet. So, to encourage them to be active, you can introduce your kids to different sports like badminton or volleyball. As an added bonus, learning a new sport will teach your kids teamwork and good sportsmanship in addition to healthy habits.
To get the most out of this idea, you should give yourself and your kids some proper sports equipment. If you like the idea of playing volleyball in your garden, make sure you have a proper ball and net to make the game as interesting as possible. To prevent injuries, you should also ensure that you all wear well-fitting children’s, women’s and mens volleyball shoes.
Go for walks
In addition to sports, another great activity for the whole family is walking. If you live near nice parks or woodland, then why not take advantage of this green space by taking your family for walks there?
Of course, walking may not sound so exciting to children who are used to TV and video games, so to make the idea of walking more exciting, you could always bring some (healthy) snacks for a picnic or even arrange a scavenger hunt.
Play games in the garden
Even though many children are used to screen-based entertainment nowadays, traditional games can still be enjoyed by the whole family. During the summer, one way to drag your kids away from screens is to play some games in the garden, such as hide and seek or even obstacle courses. This will ensure that your kids get active and get outside whilst having a lot of fun.
Use technology:
Technology doesn’t have to be your enemy. Although many video games promote sedentary behavior, there are also games like Just Dance that keep you moving. So, on rainy days when there’s no chance of going for a walk or playing games in the garden, playing a sports-based or dancing-based video game will help the whole family to still remain active.
Plus, like with regular sports, these games encourage you to compete with each other, which can be a lot of fun. Or, if you’ve got a large family, you can split into two or more teams and work on your teamwork skills.
Encouraging your kids to be active can be extremely challenging nowadays thanks to the appeal of screen-based entertainment.
However, by making exercise fun and organizing creative healthy activities for families, you can make your kids enjoy being active and help the whole family stay healthy.
