If you’re looking for some fun ways to get your littles excited about exercise, trying some creative workouts for kids just might be the ticket. Step outside of the box, so to speak, and make exercise more of a game than a chore. Who knows, once you’ve tried a few of these, perhaps you or your child will be inspired to come up with a few imaginative workout ideas yourselves!
Exercise with Dice
Find fitness fun with a simple roll of the dice. Create chance workouts for kids by making your own dice out of large foam blocks, construction paper, markers, and tape. Put numbers on each side of one die, and exercises on each side of the other. Set your boundaries, roll the dice, and you’ll have a different number/exercise combo with each roll.
Popsicle Stick Workout Jar
Turn a craft project into fun workouts for kids! You’ll need some popsicle sticks, six paint colors, brushes, newspaper, and a permanent marker. Start by painting the popsicle sticks – eight of each color. Then come up with eight exercises each for six different categories: cardio, core, legs, arms, back, and chest. Once you have all of your exercises listed on sticks, toss them in a jar and when it’s time to workout have the kids randomly choose two or three sticks from the day’s chosen category. This system is truly personalized, so when your kids advance or grow, you can simply make new sticks with different, more challenging exercises.
Spell Your Name Workout
Have kids practice their spelling while they exercise! Write the alphabet and assign each letter an exercise. Start by having your child spell their name, and do the exercises associated with each letter of their name. Repeat twice for a complete workout. Then, add some variety by having the kids spell a new word for every workout.
DIY Fitness Ball
Grab a beach ball, a permanent marker, a list of exercises, and you have all that you need to make your own fitness ball. Simply blow up the beach ball and use the marker to list three or four exercises on each color panel of the ball. Once your fitness ball is ready, have someone start some music and have everyone toss the ball back and forth until the music is stopped. Whoever is holding the ball when the music stops will name the exercise closest to their right thumb. Then, everyone playing does the exercise.
Super Hero Workout
Get your super hero on with this interval-style workout that incorporates sprinting, jumping, push-ups, sit-ups, and air kicking. And, of course, there’s time for brief rests between each super hero action. Big kids can get a great workout from the Super Hero Workout just as much as the little kids. And the best part: it’s quick and it is FUN! If you really want to bump up the fun factor, have everyone grab their favorite super hero costume before the workout starts. After all, who doesn’t want to be a super hero once in a while?!
UNO Workout
Make fun workouts for kids with a classic card game. Grab a deck of UNO cards and clear the way for a fun, off-the-cuff style workout with your kids. Everyone will draw a card and perform the exercise associated with it: If you draw a yellow card you will do jumping jacks, as many jumping jacks as the number that is on your card. If you draw a blue card, you will do push ups, as many as the number on the card. A red card is 30 second planks, again do as many as the number on your card. Green is squats. If you draw an action card, a draw 2 or 4, a wild card, reverse or skip card, you will do 10 exercises of your choice. After you complete your task for that card, go and grab another card. Continue the game for as long as your allotted workout time. Keep the activity fresh by adding different exercises to match each color!
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