Being physically active is a key ingredient in living a healthy, well-balanced lifestyle. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, it’s even recommended that children and adolescents should do 60 minutes or more of physical activity a day. This can be concerning since only 24% of children ages 6 to 17 years of age get that recommended amount of exercise.
Fortunately, there are ways to encourage your little ones to get their bodies moving. One of the best ways to get your kids active is to make exercise into entertainment. To that end, below we’ve outlined 3 fun physical activities for kids of all ages.
Activity #1: Connect The Dots
Our first activity puts an active spin on a classic game: Connect The Dots. For this game, all your kids have to do is go down the list of exercises and complete each activity 10 times. For example, if they were to do 10 mummy kicks, they would connect dots 15-20. Afterward, they would choose a different exercise to do for 10 reps and connect the corresponding dots when they’re finished.
What’s great about this activity is that you can even use the exercises provided for other Connect The Dots worksheets. Just have them connect about 6 dots for each exercise completed and the activity becomes reusable for any other Connect The Dots game.
Activity #2: Bingo Burst
Bingo Burst is our second physical activity for kids that blends exercise with coloring. This game is particularly good for children who aren’t experienced with exercise. Each movement is simple to follow with cute accompanying pictures of animals going through the motions.
The premise of this activity is similar to the previous one, except that for every exercise your youngster completes, they get to color in another letter until the entire word of “Bingo” is colored in. This means that if your child performs narrow-knee squats for 30 seconds, they are then able to color in the “N.” If they complete 30 seconds of the inchworms exercise, they can color in the “I” and so on and so forth. Once they have “Bingo” completely colored in, they’ve won!
Activity #3: 100 Point Challenge
Lastly, the 100 Point Challenge is an activity that your kids can complete again and again. If they really enjoy themselves, you might even want to incorporate it into their daily morning routine.
The basic premise of this challenge is that each exercise has a number of points assigned to it. When you hop up and down on your right foot 10 times, for example, you can earn 2 points. When you do 10 burpees, you earn 4 points. For extra difficult challenges like doing 30-star jumps or 50 jump ropes, you’ll get even more points.
For this activity, your little ones can either play until they have 100 points, or continue playing to see how high they can get their score. Since this activity can become intense fast with a lot of jumping exercises, be on the lookout for some Black Friday shoes to make sure your children’s feet are secure.
You can download all of the printable activities here.
Conclusion
For kids and adults alike, it’s crucial to keep your body healthy with regular physical activity. While it’s not always easy to get your kids excited about exercise, the games listed above will help encourage them to get moving with some. You may even want to do the challenges along with them. If they see that you’re exercising with enthusiasm, it could motivate them to do the same.
