During the pleasant days of summer, children and adolescents have more time to themselves and a reprieve from school constraints such as homework, studying, and other academic duties. Finding techniques to encourage your children to be physically active over the summer, when they are not in school and do not have organised after-school activities, may be difficult. Therefore, establishing a game plan may be an effective method for keeping your children active and healthy during the whole summer.
Children and adolescents who engage in regular physical exercise have several benefits, including improvements to their cardiovascular fitness, muscular fitness, bone health, and cognitive performance, as well as a greater likelihood of being healthy as adults. Children and adolescents should participate in a minimum of sixty minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day, with an emphasis on strenuous activities at least three times per week. This will enable them to enjoy the health advantages of this level of exercise. Additionally, impact-based bone-strengthening exercises, such as hopping and leaping, should be integrated into the daily 60-minute, three-days-per-week schedule. These activities include climbing, a kind of resistance training, and weightlifting, an example of a muscle-building exercise.
The following list of tips may assist you in encouraging your children to stay physically active during the whole summer:
- Maintain a consistent schedule: Create a daily plan for your children that includes time allotted for movement-related activities to ensure they meet the minimum physical activity requirements. These may be scheduled in small increments throughout the day, or they may run constantly for larger durations. You may aid your children in building lifelong healthy habits by emphasizing the significance of physical exercise and encouraging them to participate in activities they find pleasurable. Individuals who were physically active as children are more likely to be physically active as adults, according to research.
Set goals: Create some summertime goals that emphasize physical activity. Spend some time conversing with your children to ensure that the goals you establish for them are relevant to their life and in line with what they really want to achieve. These may include accomplishing a specified time for completing an activity such as a race or obstacle course, or developing a particular ability such as catching a baseball, dribbling a basketball, or doing a cartwheel. They may also involve accomplishing a specific number of movement-related chores each week, finishing a race or obstacle course in a given amount of time, or completing an activity in a certain amount of time. Your child’s motivation may be maintained by assigning little rewards for the achievement of each goal. This will assist your child in staying on track.
Assign duties that involve movement, such as: Give your children active, age-appropriate chores around the house that will keep them moving. These chores include taking out the trash, cleaning the home, mowing the yard, walking the dog, and tending to the garden. Create a weekly schedule and search for ways to guarantee that your children do the weekly duties that have been given to them. You may also incorporate humor into your weekly duties by turning them into games, such as a competition to see who can fold the most clothes or a race to see who can clean the bedroom the fastest.
Include the whole household in the activity: Plan activities for the family that will get everyone up and moving together. These may include bike trips, treks, and backyard activities such as water balloon duels, treasure hunts, obstacle courses, relay races, kickball games, and even family Olympics. Your children are more likely to participate in an activity if it is entertaining and creative, and they are also more likely to have a positive attitude about physical exercises. 
Find activities with some degree of structure: It is strongly suggested that you enroll your children in organized activities that include physical activity, such as sports or summer camps. In addition, encourage your child to participate in the numerous online programmed available to them, such as online dance classes, martial arts lessons, and imaginative fitness programming designed specifically for children, such as online yoga classes, quick workouts, and movement-based activities.- If you want your children to remain active throughout the summer, make being active a pleasurable experience for them. This is the most important thing you can do to promote your children’s physical activity. Find activities that your children like, since this will help to keep them involved and motivated, and do not be afraid to encourage them to try new things. Consider activities that will help your kid develop and improve their motor skills, that are appropriate for your child’s age and attention span, and that are consistent with the things that your child enjoys doing when helping your child choose summer activities.
