This is the first in the series of our ‘Encouraging active children’ articles.
Do you struggle to keep your children active or are your children the ones doing every activity going?
You might have read our article a while back on ‘Generation Go, Go, Go‘, where we looked at how active children are today, compared with years ago. Sometimes this is hard to believe when you read about the childhood obesity rates but this is clearly still a real issue.
As parents, how can you encourage children to be active? It doesn’t always have to be expensive after school activities.
- encourage outdoor play at home
- head to the local park
- go for a family walk
- go out on scooters or bikes
- walk or scoot to school – if you live too far away you could park nearby and walk the last bit
- dance around the house together
- head to your local swimming pool
Many local swimming pools have free family sessions, holiday sessions etc, so try to take advantage of those. Swimming can be great fun for all the family and help to encourage children to be active whilst having fun together.
Make sure you have a good product with you for the showers afterwards, we like this 3 in 1 from Childs Farm because it can be used on the whole family, even newborns and it acts as a shampoo, conditioner and body wash.
Aside from organised activities, what are your favourite ways to encourage your children to be active?
8 comments
WE go for walks in the woods and at the beach. Out door play areas are great. We have even in the winter taken a camping cooker and cooked bacon outside and had a hot picnic. We also have a toy that is a sort of flying saucer shape and filled with air. It does erratic things when thrown up high and it has them running every where. It can be a challenge to get them out but they feel better for it and so do we.
Oh how lovely! I love the idea of a hot picnic – thank you for your comment 🙂
Congrats on becoming a brand ambassador for Child’s Farm, great brand! I agree that it’s really important to drum healthy eating and active habits into the kids from a young age. Fab post x
Thank you! Yes I think it just becomes the norm then 🙂
Apart from family outings, we have a large garden and live in the country. There are days in the summer when the children only seem to come in for food! Natural playthings seems to be key in their playing. And being old enough that I don’t need to watch them all the time. They do lots of after school activities and have a list of things that they would like to try. I let them choose. I’ve learnt. Dragging a child to ballet because I enjoyed it at their age, is not the way to go.
Exactly – I hate seeing children dragged to things they clearly aren’t keen on. I can’t imagine not having to watch them all the time … one day ! Thanks for sharing your experience 🙂
Great post! We love anything outside…parks, hikes, etc.
The park is a great default isn’t it, gets everyone out and moving 🙂