8 Ways To Get And Stay Fit While Having Fun With Kids
Many of us want to be more active, go to the gym and shed off the piling up pounds. With the long working hours it's already hard to find another two hours or so for the workout but for those of you with kids it may be impossible.
You may feel that your family life is more important than working out or maybe your baby sitter is not happy to cover more hours. It's not a lost cause, you can have both - be active and have a quality time with your children.
What it takes is choosing the activities that will get you going and will be fun for them. In fact it's not only good for you but for your kids as well. They have more energy than you so they need a way to let it go.
And if your kids belong to the group that don’t like to move much, and prefer to stay at the computer screen or TV most of the day - engaging them in any of the activities below will give them something else to focus on and will serve them well for the future.
There are many more ideas than those listed here so treat them as a rough guideline and go with the flow. I'm sure that you will spot many more opportunities once you started or it's quite likely that your kids will come up with brilliant ideas.
Monkey world
They are named differently but they all offer slides, rope and stairs climbing along with pools full of plastic balls. Those areas are perfectly safe for your kids and it's quite likely that you were leaving them to play there on their own more than once.
I encourage you to find a place with a bit bigger slides and constructions, where parents can accompany their children. Then have a go. Running after your kids around the spiral stairs of crawling in tiny tunnels will get your muscles working while you will be close with your children.
And don't be afraid of slides - kids can do them so you should be able as well. Once you are bored with sliding you can have a battle using soft toys or swim in the balls pool. Just allow the child in you reappear and have fun.
Lagoon swimming
There are many lagoon pools that are offering fun for kids with pirate ships and water fountains. Some have different types of slides, from small and lazy to big and speedy. Sometimes there is also a river where you can be taken by a current and feel the speed.
Don't sit on the edge of the pool, get yourself involved. Take your kid on a big ride, they will scream from the joy and often they wouldn't be allowed there alone. Chase them around, shoot from a water cannon or teach how to swim on a quieter water. It will give you all a quality time together and a way of stretching your muscles while having fun
Day on the beach
If you live near the coast and often spend days out on the beach, then you have a perfect opportunity to start moving your body. Don’t lie stationary whole day frying yourself, get up and join your kids. I’m sure they already have hundreds ideas how to spend a time actively.
You can jump on the waves with them, run after them splashing water around. Help them build the best ever sand castle or play the beach volleyball. After a long day, not only your tan will be much more even than usual but you will feel the muscles you wouldn’t even suspected they could exist.
Camping and backpacking
For all outdoor lovers, going camping for a weekend with children is a really great idea. I’m sure you’ve done it many times when you were a child and you may still remember how fantastic it was for you. Do the same for your kids, bring the fun for them
While you there, there are many opportunities to get you all going. If you end up near the forest, you may go for a walk to pick up berries or wild mushrooms if the season is right. If there is a lake nearby, you can take them for a trip to explore the area. You might be able to hire some sort of a rowing boat or canoe. If there is more than one pair of paddles, your kids could help you out and I bet they will love it. If there is no way to hire anything, you can always think about some inflatable boats.
Bicycle trip
One more activity, which is very popular and very good to stay in shape, is cycling. More and more towns offer cycling paths so it's safer to go around with kids. However, if you have a car with bicycle racks, you all can find a more attractive area somewhere further from the city, like forest or meadows. It can be a great addition to a camping weekend.
What’s good about is that even the youngest children can go – either on their own small bikes, or sitting on an attachment to your proper adult bicycle. Spend a bit of time planning your bicycle trip so there is always something to look for at the end of it – it could be a lake with beautiful sandy beach or a forest clearing for a perfect picnic. How does it sound comparing with cycling class at the gym?
Treasure hunt - is a game of searching for hidden artefact, usually of a small value, by following clues that lead to the final location of the treasure.
Scavenger hunt - is a game of searching for a list of items specified by hunt creator. The goal might be achieved by finding all of them without purchasing or by taking photos of them.
Treasure and scavenger hunts
If you are not a cycling fan but you still like to spend time in the countryside, there are many treasure hunts going on. Just find a website offering a hunt or mystery trail in your local area. You might be asked to pay a small fee for a treasure hunt map and go hunting for clues on your own.
You may also find companies that organize everything for you, so you just turn up on the day and everything is ready but that may come with the higher price. A lot of them are designed for younger kids so not only teens will find it exciting. In the end while your kids are happily chasing after the treasure, you are stretching your legs following them.
Ice skating
In a very hot weather, you may hope for a place to cool down a bit– the ice rink is a perfect place as they need to keep temperature low to preserve the ice. Some of you probably never tried to skate on the ice at all but this is the best workout for your legs and also a brilliant balancing exercise.
You can start it at any age and there are often classes to help you in your first steps. If you are seasoned skater, you will know the ice rinks in the area already but they should be easy to find on the internet. You don’t need to have your own skates as you can hire them at the skating place. Sometimes there is also a possibility to hire skating helpers for kids so they don’t fall over that often. Still falling is part of this activity and it’s a necessity when you learn, remember your first trials on a bike? This is the same thing, but you can master it very quickly.
Inline skating
Sometimes you may live in the area where ice rink is not available at all. In such a case you may choose its alternative – inline or roller skating. It became very popular in recent years and I’m pretty sure your kids already know how to do it. It might be a challenge for you so prepare yourself well before even trying.
Put on some safety clothes so when you fell over, and you do, you won’t hurt yourself. If you cannot find a dedicated area for inline skating, find a place with even surface, it will make your experience much better and after a while you may even start enjoying yourself. To keep balance and gain speed, you need to involve many muscles which helps your goal of getting an staying fit.
Quality time with your family
There are many more ways of being active with your kids and I’m sure you will enjoy discovering them together. The important thing is that your experiences together will create stronger family bond and you will have memories to share later.
When your children spend time at home watching TV or playing the latest game, you don’t share this time together and soon they will grow up and avoid going with their parents at all. Treasure the time you have and find ways to be with them more. Show them the world and let them explore the real thing - game can wait, it won’t go anywhere and even with the latest 3D technology it’s still just a highly polished fake and not a real thing.
