With sports and physical fitness less accessible, it is important to keep our bodies moving. Teachers on Call shares some great physical activities parents and kids can do together in the home.
COVID-19 has really taken a toll on sports and physical fitness accessible to students in school and as extracurricular activities. It’s important that we keep moving our bodies (especially during this time of remote school and work from home), but the weather won’t always permit it outdoors.
With that in mind, here are some great physical activities that parents and kids can do together at home in 30 minutes or less – perfect for doing during a nutrition break or in the evenings before suppertime.
We recommend doing a little bit of all of these!
Yoga
Yoga is a great physical activity for everyone. It helps balance, coordination, strength and flexibility, and it can be low impact! A mat, block, and band can help, but it’s not required – the better channels will show you modified forms of the poses for videos. There are lots of videos online for yoga, from beginner to advanced, and you can find a time interval that works with everyone’s schedule (even as short as 10 minutes).
If you’re spending a lot of time sitting, stretching the hip flexors is especially important for both kids and adults alike, as it can affect gait, flexibility, and cause lower back pain. There are lots of yoga poses that stretch the hips, including garland pose, pigeon pose, lizard pose, and cow face pose. But for beginners, a variant of the kneeling crescent lunge is probably the easiest – and it’s one that even physical therapists recommend for stretching.
Circuit and body weight
Circuit and body weight workouts are more traditional – think things like jumping jacks, squats, and lunges. They’re still great activities, and while they can be done with hand weights, mats, and exercise balls, it’s definitely not required.
These are exercises that are great for older kids, as they will definitely get you up and moving!
Pilates
Pilates is something that seems ridiculously easy – until you try to do it yourself! In a way, Pilates is one of the perfect exercises. It’s a little bit cardio and a little bit body weight, it’s easy to scale up the difficulty, can be low impact, can be done in any duration that is convenient, and requires no equipment beyond you.
Like yoga, there’s tons of great Pilates videos that range from beginner to advanced. Many even incorporate yoga for stretching. (We recommend starting gentle.)
Dance workouts
Dance workouts with kids is a great option, and it’s not hard to see why. This one is definitely the most fun, but also takes the most space and is the highest intensity! There are games that you can play to get dance workouts and a friendly competition in like Just Dance (which is available for most gaming consoles). There are also plenty of YouTube offerings that have Disney-themed or other kid-friendly dance workouts.
Remember, physical activity is an important part of every day! Be sure to check out our post on gentle spring outdoor activities too!
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