Winter exercise and indoor fun

Winter—the time of year to snuggle with your children under a thick blanket, with a fire roaring and hot chocolate warming hands, and read book after book after book. However, if your kids are anything like mine (who love my reading to them) they’ll be bouncing off the walls after several books.

Kids need to move! Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association recommend that children get at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity daily. And if it’s one of those days, you know, the wind howling and the rain pelting down, how do you help them get the exercise they need, without sending them outside? Here are a few ideas.

Dancing. This is one of my girls’ favorite activities. They dress up and bounce around the living room. They especially like it when I join in or give them an audience. I change the type of music regularly to keep it interesting. We listen to children’s music (check out the library for a huge selection), as well as classical, jazz, and Latin. We also sing songs like The Hokey Pokey, Ring Around the Rosy, and London Bridge is Falling Down to keep us moving.

Games. We play games such as Follow the Leader, charades, and Simon Says (Simon loves to tell the kids to do somersaults, jumping jacks, and cartwheels!). My girls also like to play hopscotch. There are mats you can buy with all the numbers displayed, or just use hand towels. Many kids enjoy keeping a balloon or inflatable ball up in the air. Another fun ball game is basketball. Set up a hoop on the back of a door and give them a soft ball to throw. There are also active games for sale—Twister is a classic. Hullabaloo is a newer game from Cranium that gets your kids up and about.

Imagination. I encourage my kids to act like a certain animal. We’ll all gallop like a horse, hop like a frog, or waddle like a duck. They also pretend to be in a marching band, and have a great time making a lot of noise with their toy instruments as they stomp around the house. We have a play hut and tunnels that my daughters like to crawl through. They pretend they are explorers in a cave or that the hut is their house.

Treasure hunt/scavenger hunt. A treasure hunt requires a little bit of planning, but kids love it! Hide clues around the house (mix upstairs and downstairs or the left and right sides of the house to keep them moving) and the final clue leads to a small “treasure.” The treasure can be a small new toy or playing a game of their choice with you. (You can draw pictures or cut items out of magazines for the clues for non-readers.) With a scavenger hunt, give kids a list of items around the house to hunt for. Again, choose items that are in different rooms, so the kids have to keep moving.

Obstacle course. Set up different stations around the house. Some ideas include having them crawl under the dining room table, spin a hula hoop three times, jump over a stack of pillows without knocking it down, navigate through several towers of blocks or empty soda bottles, do a certain number of jumping jacks and/or somersaults, hop on one foot, and throw a beanbag into a laundry basket. You can also incorporate some of the different activities previously mentioned.

One last tip. Encourage your children to exercise throughout the day, otherwise evening will come and your kids will be running around the house while you are at your most tired and least patient. And before you know it, the crocuses will start peeking through the soil, spring will arrive, and you can all go back outside.