On the world day of physical activity, what better than to teach you how to do sports with children. It is very easy to say that we should do sports with our children, but the hard part comes when we have to choose an activity for them to exercise and have fun.
After giving many turns we have managed to collect 23 ideas for sports with children, both in the city and in the countryside, and especially simple but fun activities.
But you may be wondering,what are the real advantages of sport for children? We confirm that there are many, both physical and emotional.
We’re not just talking about competitive sports or extracurricular activities, but about what you can do with them yourself, whether it’s going for a walk or playing with them in the park.
Sport helps our body
Self-esteem
Better mood and ability to face the goals of each day.
Concentration
Promotes the ability to concentrate and participatory attitude.
Improved health
Prevents injuries, damage from poor posture and improved heart health. Reduced chances of being overweight. Reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.
Better rest
Doing sports helps us to get a better sleep and have a better rest.
Now it is up to you that your little ones do sports and become fond of practicing exercise, which is influenced by several determining factors. The main one is the social and family environment in which children move, as expected.
If your child has grown up surrounded by bad consumer habits, with parents who do not encourage sports practice and prefer a more sedentary life, or see that in their family circle they disown sport, it is normal that the child sees no interest in exercise and leaves aside everything related to a healthier life.
With the distractions that exist today, such as television or video game consoles, do not expect your children to decide on their own to do sports.
eNCOURAGE SPORTS AT HOME!
You should be the physical education teacher at home and you should promote sports plans so that your children are not left sitting on the couch.
Of course, you have to save time for homework, we will not let them fail, everything can be combined.
but how do we get the kids to be attracted to sports? Here are some tips to encourage sport in your family environment:
- Contribute so that the practice of exercise is part of their interest.
- Help your children find a sport that they enjoy.
- Show interest in what they do (attend games, cheer them on, etc).
- Reduce time spent in sedentary activities.
- Have an active lifestyle and good nutrition.
And now, what can I do with my children to practice sports regularly during the week?
Ideas for practicing sports without leaving home
Many times we are at home without being able to go out and the children get bored or do nothing else but watch cartoons or be glued to the screens. At the end of the day the kids are still energetic and parents can’t take it anymore. You need to include sports in your daily routine with the kids!
Even if you have to be at home, there is no excuse for not exercising with the whole family, that’s why we want to give you easy and fun ideas for your kids to enjoy doing sports at home. It’s the best way to entertain the kids, get them to use up their energy and get them into an active lifestyle. Come on, get off the couch and get to work!
You have plenty of options to choose from. Here are 23 ideas for doing sports with kids at home.
1. Dance to cheer up the body
Music is one of the best things in life, and why not take advantage of it to get in shape?
Thanks to the Internet today we can access all kinds of music at home, so do not think about it, look for your children’s favorite songs and start dancing with them demonstrating your best steps.
You can also look for music videos with choreography, they are hilarious and a great way to move the skeleton as a family and burn energy.
Here are some examples:
two hours of dancing with the kids can be more intense than hitting the gym all afternoon!
2. Exercise routine at home
We don’t need a gym to exercise our body, with desire and a little space we can perform a small exercise routine with our children several times a week.
In addition to getting the little ones to do sports, it will also be good for us to do this series of exercises for our body.
Remove the furniture from the living room, place some mats on the floor and get to work! Your kids will love spending time with you and there’s nothing better than doing it in this healthy way.
If you are inexperienced or don’t know where to start to create your own routine, here is an example of an easy routine to do at home with the kids:
3. Active games to do at home
Any game you set up at home can be good exercise for your kids. You just have to use a little imagination, the possibilities are endless!
Here are some ideas for sports through easy games that kids can play to keep them active and have a great time without having to leave the house.
Active Game 1 – Hopscotch
remember the hours we spent as kids playing hopscotch? Well, all you need is some tape, string or chalk to set it up at home.
With this game your children will work on balance, coordination and aiming.
Draw hopscotch on the floor and get a stone or a piece of wood.
How the game works: the game consists of throwing the stone into each square (starting with square 1) and jumping through the squares until you reach the end, then turn around and go back to the beginning and pick up the stone on the way back.
You can only step on each square with one foot, so the single squares will be jumped with only one foot (on one foot) and the double squares with both feet.
If you step on the line or go out of the square during the course, you pass turn. You also pass a turn if when you throw the stone it does not land on the square you are playing on or if the stone is stepping on the line. Be careful, you can not step on the square containing the stone, you will have to jump or pass on one foot if it is a double square.
The winner is the one who reaches the sky (the final semicircular square that is painted at the end) by correctly completing the course.
Active Game 2 – Balloon sports
You can’t even imagine how many sports you can practice at home with a simple balloon. You can play tennis, hockey, volleyball, basketball and practically anything you want. Choose your favorite sport and adapt it to spend an afternoon having fun with your kids, you’ll see how you sweat it out!
Active game 3: tape races or obstacle courses
Here you have a thousand different options, you can create a course of varying difficulty according to the age and ability of your children.
You can use anything you have at home: chairs, bottles, toilet paper rolls, adhesive tape, etc.
You can make a long course that goes through the whole house or a short one that must be overcome several times to win. You can also have the children play against themselves, timing the course so that they try to do it in less time each time.
Active Play 4 – Turn to classic games that never fail
Remember the toys you used when you were little, most of them were used for sports and it’s a shame that they are falling into oblivion. These are just some of them:
Active game 5 – The elastic game
You can play alone, using a chair or other object to hold the ends or play in a group, two people hold the elastic while the others play and when each participant fails, they go on to hold the elastic.
Active Game 6 – Hula Hoop
It is a very simple game and has many variations to practice, improve the technique and increase the difficulty of the exercises. In youTube you have a thousand videos to inspire you.
Active game 7 – Pulling the rope
If you have several children at home, this is a perfect and simple game. You only need a rope, a handkerchief to knot in the center of the room and some tape to make a mark on the floor, in the center of the room.
Active game 8 – The handkerchief game
If you have a large, spacious room or a wide hallway, you can play the handkerchief game,
Someone must act as a referee. It will be the one who holds the handkerchief and who stands in the center. He must give a number to each participant of the teams that are placed at the two ends of the room. The referee shouts out a number and the two opposing participants who have that number must run towards the handkerchief. The winner of the race is the one who catches the handkerchief and reaches his field without being caught by the opponent.
It can be played by elimination of the player of the losing team or by points. For example, each race won is one point and the team that reaches 5 points first wins.
Active Game 9 – Sack Race
is there anything simpler and more fun to play sports at home with the kids?
You can easily set up sack races at home, if you don’t have a sack, you can even use plastic bags or garbage bags.
You can race each other, or make a circuit and time yourself to see who can finish it in the shortest time.
Active game 10 – Skipping rope
Jumping rope is one of the best cardio exercises out there, both for adults and children. It is an aerobic exercise with low risk of injury that has multiple benefits:
- It is very effective for weight loss as it burns a lot of calories
- Helps strengthen legs, arms and shoulders
- Improves coordination and stability
- Strengthens bones thanks to the micro-impacts of each jump
- It is very versatile, you can combine many exercises and decrease or increase the intensity according to your ability
and best of all, you only need a rope to have fun exercising with your family!
As you can see, with a little ingenuity you can come up with a multitude of active games to exercise with the kids at home, but that’s not all, we have a final idea that you’re going to love!
The Olympics at home
Create your own Olympic games at home by combining several disciplines of active games that we have just explained.
Each day of the week you can motivate your children to train an activity and at the weekend you can set up the Olympics at home to put into practice everything they have learned!
You can combine several individual games in different tests or make complete circuits. And best of all, you can reward them at the end for all the weekly effort they have made. Don’t you think it’s a great plan to spend the weekend at home with the family?
4 Yoga for kids
Yoga is a great exercise for the whole family. It can be practiced from children to parents or grandparents and besides being very healthy, it helps us to relax and eliminate the stress of the day.
It is perfect to do at home since you don’t need any material. Just a towel or a mat to put on the floor.
On YouTube there are plenty of videos to get started in yoga, even Yoga sessions to do with children.
would you like to try it? Surely it is a very positive experience and a good example of exercise for your children to learn healthy lifestyle habits.
5. Help with household chores
Those who are used to doing housework know that it can be just another exercise, so why not take advantage of it?
If in addition to getting the kids moving, we teach them how to do housework, it will be a double victory!
how can you do this?
Teaching little ones that household chores are a family affair is one of the best things we can do.
Vacuuming, cleaning the furniture or making the bed are everyday actions that can help our children to move around a bit and help parents to have a tidier house.
Ideas for outdoor sports
1. Bicycle route
Surely you have a couple of bicycles in the storage room at home, so take them out, clean a little dust on them and go out with your children for a ride and get some fresh air.
If you are up for it and you have some time on the weekends, we also recommend you to organize a route through a more rural place, since nature is a place to spend a good day and for the little ones to enjoy with their friends at school or with the family.
In this link you can find the types of routes that you can do with your children, even your little one with a wheeled bike will want to go.
2. Hiking in the middle of nature
Before we told you that if you found some time during the weekend it would be a great opportunity to go on a bike route in the countryside, but if you are more of a walker you can also take your children to a more natural area away from the city.
Children love to investigate new things and enjoy a space where they can move more freely.
In the countryside they will be able to run without us always having to watch out that they do not get into the road in a moment of carelessness, in addition to being in contact with nature and breathing fresh air, something that never hurts.
You may be wondering..
what do I need to go hiking? Don’t worry, here are the most important things you need to go hiking in the countryside.
Comfortable shoes that won’t hurt you
Appropriate clothing for the time of the year.
Backpack that is not too heavy and comfortable.
Bring water, hats, sunglasses and sunscreen.
3. In summer, to the beach or swimming pool
what better thing to do in summer than take a dip to cool off?
We can take advantage of those trips to the beach or the pool to swim with our children and do a little sport.
This activity can also reinforce the learning of swimming, perhaps some of them will be starting to swim during those months.
During the vacations children have many free hours, so we must find games to entertain them at the beach, the pool or at home. In addition to the sport that we always recommend, in another of our articles you can see more than 60 summer activities for children with which to avoid boredom during the vacations.
SUMMER ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS
4. Sign them up for an after-school sport
Afternoons can be very long on certain days, so it’s not a bad idea to sign our kids up for some sports activities during the after-school hours.
Team sports are a good option, since, in addition to exercise, the children will meet new friends and become more passionate about the sport.
You can try several disciplines until you find the one that the boy or girl likes the most, you should not let them do an activity that does not appeal to them because they will not enjoy it and may create a negative view of the sport.
5. Rollerblades, another fun alternative
Earlier we talked about the bike, but we know that many of you are not very familiar with them and prefer to leave them parked in the store.skates
For those of you who are looking for something similar to cycling, you can opt for roller skates, inline skates or the classic four-wheeled skates from the 80’s movies.
With skates you can go for a short ride around the house or go down to the park with other friends who use bicycles. On the other hand, skates allow us to exercise our legs and perfect our sense of balance.
6. Playing in the backyard with friends
If your children have not found any after-school activity entertaining, they just need to go down to the playground in the afternoons and play with friends, either with a ball, scooters, roller skates or traditional games (hide and seek, hopscotch, etc.).
no TV and video games for a few hours!
As you can see, doing a little sport is not so difficult, we don’t need much effort to go out for a few hours and let your children enjoy their afternoons. You can also organize some games, which you can also use later at home.
7. And the last one is the simplest and easiest one, a walk
A simple walk around the city, you don’t need anything else. One or several hours of walking near home is also doing sport, going out to do the shopping is also doing sport or going for a walk to visit the grandparents is also doing exercise.
You can see that with very little we can be in shape and encourage exercise among our children to lead a healthy life.
If we combine it with a good diet we will be grateful in the future, so do not forget to go through our previous post in which we talked to several nutritionists who advised us on how should be the daily meals of the little ones.
Stay tuned to our social networks and blog to learn more about nutrition and sport.
