How to Keep Kids Active Indoors During Winter

Cold temperatures, snow, ice and many other elements make it hard to get kids outside and stay active during the winter months. The nice thing is that to get your kids going during the winter indoors you don’t need anything special just a little bit of creative thinking. With many kids being overweight these days this is a great way to help get kids moving to help fight being overweight or to create a healthy habit to keep them fit.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Area in your home

How to Keep Kids Active Indoors During Winter

1. First is to find an area where everyone will have some room to stretch out and not be in each others way. A large bedroom, family room or other open room works great, you may have to move a few things out of the way so nothing gets broke and no one gets hurt.
2. Once you have the space picked out and ready to go-this is the creative thinking part-find an activity that everyone, including mom or/and dad can do with the kids. Doing the activity together as a family helps keep the kids excited about it. Some activities are pretending that you’re marching in a band, dancing, doing summersaults in the middle of the room, having a gentle pillow fight, sitting in a circle and rolling a ball back and forth, there are so many others that can be thought of.
3. When the activity is set-start playing. Try to keep the kids going for half an hour, if you can keep them going longer, great. It’s not always easy to keep kids going on one thing for long, that’s why if you’re doing it with them, you have a better chance of keeping them involved.
4. Once you’re done with your activity time put everything back that had to be moved to make room.
5. Repeat steps 2-3 if you don’t have to move anything in your room or steps 1-4 if you do have to move a few things at least every other day. Some families may find that they will set the same time everyday for an activity, others don’t have as much time or a set time that will work. This is very flexible, do what works best for your family.

Tips & Warnings

• There are also game systems that now get kids up and moving but they can be a bit expensive and not for everyone.