Exercise...

I've been thinking a lot lately about exercise for the kids. My preschooler email bulletin from Babycenter today had several links to articles about it as well, so I guess it's on many people's minds. I know that 60 minutes of daily exercise is recommended, but some days it is hard to get that all in. Sometimes with the big kids I just think, well good grief, they NEVER sit still, they've got to be active enough! But this article is saying that 89% of "so-called exercise" seen in the surveyed preschools was too sedentary and basically didn't count.


In addition, this article is saying that even INFANTS who are cared for in a home daycare setting are ending up heavier than ones who stay at home or go to corporate centers. Really? They aren't sure of the correlation, but they see it happening. It makes for some interesting reading- food for thought, although I have no idea why or what to do about that. It's much easier to work on physical curriculum for the big kids. Usually tummy time and room to crawl is enough for the babies. But just knowing that it's a possibility makes me want to be sure that I have enough opportunities set up!

I can see that we don't always do enough with the big ones here, especially in the hot summer. Spring and fall are much better for us in terms of going outdoors. We just can't stay out long enough to do much right now, because in about ten minutes they're bright red and sweaty and begging to go back in. And inside the house they'd like to run around, but since this is my HOUSE and not a center, I like to try to reinforce house rules. You don't run inside the house- at least my family doesn't. Walking feet. Please don't jump off the couch, get down, settle down.... it doesn't lend itself to a lot of exercise. I have some large-muscle games like ring toss and bean bags, and we have a couple kid exercise videos, but it's not the same as getting to really run around. (Although the "workout in a chair" snippet of Elmocise kicks my tail if I do it with them..... )


I got a book at my last workshop called Jump Into Math that I really like so far. The whole thing is physical activities to do in small chunks with the kids, just a few minutes at a time, that stimulate both brainpower and muscle work. We're also going to start active games like Red Rover and Red Light Green Light.

We didn't choose to do summer classes with Ms. Mimmie, but she was GREAT at making sure they got all their activity in on Tuesdays. Hopefully in the fall we can start that back up too.


What other ideas do you guys have that would be good? I'm going to keep looking around for more, but I can always use feedback!!