Active kids – for life

Filed Under Tips & Tricks | May 14, 2008

Jump Gymnastics

As a follow up to our article on active kids  last month, we’re continuing the active theme with a second column from Jennifer Hood of Jump! Gymnastics. She has lots of great ideas for how to incorporate that all-important unstructured play into your child’s life:

Physical activity is essential for healthy child development. It is how our kids acquire the basic co-ordination, strength, confidence and creativity they need to be healthy and active for life. New Canadian guidelines recommend a minimum of 60 minutes (and up to several hours) of unstructured physical activity daily for young children.

Just by being themselves most children will meet the 60 minute minimum recommendation – but there is no such thing as too much activity, so here are some ways you can help encourage active play:

  1. Give active gifts—hula hoops, balls and skipping ropes are all inexpensive and provide hours of active play opportunities.
  2. Join Silken Laumann’s Active Kids Movement and “Take Back our Parks”.
  3. Regularly designate a day “Active Family Day” and try out activities around the city. We love the hikes in Pacific Spirit Park, swimming at the local pools, tobogganing on the North Shore and wading out to the sand bar (at low tide) off of Spanish Banks Dog Beach.
  4. Include the kids in your favourite activities – do afternoon yoga stretches together or dance to your ’80s mixed tapes.
  5. Insert silly games into daily activities – we play the “animal game” while stirring the pasta for dinner: call out various animals and watch your kids’ contortions as they pretend to be that animal. Try getting all fancy and see what happens when you call out for “backwards tigers” or our personal favourite, “silent snakes”.
  6. Slow down and let your kids play whenever possible – give them time to skip, hop and jump to the car. . .we have been known to let out kids walk like bears down the street! Children can make an adventure out of anything whether it be balancing on the edge of sidewalk curbs or wriggling through the bicycle racks on downtown sidewalks.
  7. Lead by example. Make sure your kids see you being active. Treat physical activity as the fun part of daily family life it should be, not a “chore” jammed into an already crazy schedule.

The most important thing to remember is to keep it simple. It would be hard for most children to NOT meet the daily 60-minute minimum. The trick is for us to remember that this activity is just as valuable as the expensive sports classes we have them registered in!

After 15 years developing gymnastics programming for young children, Jennifer Hood will be announcing the location of her own facility:  Jump! Gymnastics on June 1st. She believes in giving children the basic building blocks of physical movement to help them become active for life.

 

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