The long days of summer, without those hours of structured school activities, leave kids more room for relaxation and sedentary screen time. However, the experts said it's critical for parents to make sure that their children still have a lot of physical activities that don't necessarily require gym time or sports.
According to OSF Healthcare, the important thing is for kids to keep moving and have physical activities this summer even if it's not an organized activity. Dr. Rebecca Sierra said that anything will do as long as the kids are outside of at least one hour of physical play.
So, what must parents do to help kids from slacking off with getting physical? Here are four tips:
1. Turn off the electronics.
One effective way for the kids to be more active is to turn off their electronics and access to the internet. This way, children won't be spending their downtime watching TV, playing video games, or using the internet.
Experts from the Kaiser Family Foundation said that the average American kid, between the ages of eight to 18 years old, spends at least seven hours of screen time. The aim for this summer is to lower that number. According to Sierra, the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics is that children should have "no more than two hours a day" of screen time.
2. Organize an hour of mindful movements.
Parents, especially those who stay at home with the children, are discovering a lot of activities they could do with their kids via Go Noodle. This site is quite familiar to some children because schools take ideas from it as well.
Developed to squash boredom away, this interactive site has a collection of videos and blogs specific for summertime fun. One of the recommended activities is to host a summer camp in the backyard with a theme for every week. These activities are categorized as sports week, arts and crafts week, road trip week, science week, or cooking week.
3. Go with old-school games like drawing chalk art on the sidewalk or playing scavenger hunts.
For families with different ages of kids, this activity would be more fun if the older siblings are assigned to plan the theme for the chalk art or the secret hiding places for the scavenger hunt. These activities will keep the kids busy, and away from the internet, for more than an hour a day.
While the kids are enjoying the outdoors, this might also be a great time to have them collect rocks from their hunt that they can paint or draw on to build a rock collection. Offer to display their work of art in your living room for some motivation.
4. Regularly conduct a fitness class.
Aside from Go Noodle, there are plenty of other child-friendly sites that have videos of yoga and other fitness routines for children. Talk to your kids about having a workout for an hour a day as a family. Include them in making a playlist of songs that could be used when they are exercising so that they will be more encouraged to participate.
As an additional incentive, offer rewards like taking them to a weekend of bowling, roller skating, or a trip to the mall that will get them walking as well.
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