Portrait Of Family On Airbed In Swimming Pool
Fast food, electronic gadgets, and trips to the mall have all become part of the average household in today’s busy world, and these do little to give children the physical activity they need. If you are searching for ways to create a healthier lifestyle for your children, here are four activities that will greatly increase their chances of staying healthy throughout their lives. These activities are not only fun: they will help set the foundation for preventing obesity, diabetes, and hypertension as your children grow older.
1. Biking
Once they are old enough for it, biking is one of the best family activities you can cultivate as a hobby with your children. This activity will help your kids develop a love for the great outdoors, and like you, they will surely enjoy the feeling of freedom that comes with cycling through different environments.
If you are thinking of getting the whole family on bikes, you can ask the children to map out a biking plan for weekends so they can look forward to exploring new places with you. If possible, find time to get on your bikes at least three times a week. This will help you derive the maximum physical benefits from this sport.
2. Swimming
Swimming is not only a wonderful cardiovascular activity; swimming is also a life-saving skill that children should acquire as soon as they can. While you can teach your children to swim, nothing beats having a professional introduce them to this activity. This provides children with a scientific approach to learning the sport, one that begins with the basics and lines up exercises in tune with their progress. For example, breathing while keeping out unwanted water is a basic skill that professionals never neglect to teach their beginners. This makes children more at ease in the water.
If you bring your children to a reputable establishment with qualified instructors, your children will not only learn to swim, they will acquire safety and self-management skills such as breath control, back floating, and other techniques that all swimmers should know. Choose an establishment that will allow children to learn at their own pace (and if you never had lessons yourself, you can even sign up for swimming lessons for adults in Houston and elsewhere). Through coaching, encouragement, and supervised exercises, children can enjoy swimming as an activity while learning a skill that might one day help them save a life.
3. Dancing
In the past, boys had to be forced to dance. Thankfully, this is not the case today. There are plenty of dance video games that both boys and girls actually love, and you see this in the malls everywhere. Try creating space and time for a dance video session with your children, and see who gets to learn the steps first. You just might be in for a nice surprise!
Dancing is good cardiovascular exercise, and video dancing can be unbelievably fun when adults and children dance side by side. Apart from being a physical activity, this actually sharpens cognitive skills as players try to remember dance step sequences or try to anticipate moves. Moreover, each player can modify the various steps so that elderly players can perform at low impact level.
4. Indoor Activities: Hula-hoops, Skipping rope, and Hopscotch
Hula-hoop, skipping rope, and hopscotch are games that your children can enjoy even if you are housebound. To sustain your children’s physical activity, set aside a definite time for these games and ask them to set goals for improving their performance. Allow them to compete with one another and give a reward to the child who does best. If your prize is attractive enough, not only will your children sustain their sessions with you, but they will also probably sneak in some extra practice time.
More and more families today have fallen into a sedentary lifestyle, and this has resulted in the unprecedented incidence of obesity in children. You can help prevent this in your own home by encouraging your children to develop the habit of being physically active. Start with these four activities and see how your children will become healthier, more alert, more confident, and more sociable.
