Exercise with your kids

[Kent]

What is your favorite exercise to do with your kids? I have a 10 (almost 11) daughter, who is already taking after her dad - tall and overweight, and getting her to exercise by herself is a chore. Right now, at least once a week we are taking 7-9 mile bike ride up and down hills or swimming in the lake. I am looking for new activities to try with her and 3 younger siblings (6's and 7 year olds) during the week -- walking outside currently is a painful experience in humidity and kid's lack of desire.

I am thinking of a sport, like frisbee golf, or something like it to ge tthe kids mind of the whole it's exercise thing.

[Shufflebutt]

I too would love some ideas.
My main concern is my 16 year old. He doesn't like to come bike riding with his parents and two 7 year old siblings. We are going out almost every night now.
Any ideas from any of you folks?
Thanks bowolf for starting this thread! :wave

[loonatika]

Touch football or rugby is a popular one over here. Great for both sexes and generally the kids are able to beat their parents quite nicely at it.

[AmyTheobald]

We just bought our 3 and 4 year old roller blades and a whole lot of pads as well. They are just practicing walking on carpet now, but should be skating within a couple months...DH and I will be getting skates too, right now I am lucky enough that excercise is not an issue with active preschoolers but hopefully we can make excercise part of their life early so that they are always active.

[Perry]

Lead by Example.

I used that strategy on our teens. We bought a treadmill and home gym with weights. My wife and I use them religiously. Once I dropped 30 lbs on Atkins and they saw that one of the key ingredients was exercise.. they naturally took to the equipment. Now we need to schedule our sessions!

[moonwish]

My older, almost-eight-years son gets a lot exercising from "hanging around" with friends. They all have bikes and some have roll-blades - I assume they use them, too LOL. At least he is all sweaty every time I get my eyes on him... Not a bit overweight and all the sweets he can eat :yikes ! My concern is he is thin, but not "fit" - and he gets tired pretty easily. So I think he needs some regular stuff. I have tried to get some "real" exercising for him, like football, swimming or light-athletics trainings, but he got bored after few weeks every time, and I was lazy enough not to force him. Now he wants to start karate training and I said if he wants to go, he must go at leats 6 months.
Not much help... just shared my life I guess...

[dreamof145]

I take my grandkids swimming with me. We have a lot of fun playing water tag and throwing and catching the nerf ball in the water. Sometimes we ride the 'noodles' and have races around the pool.

Sometimes I take them on walks and even though we are moving slower and picking up leaves and looking at snails along the path, we are still moving.

I've been also taking them to the basketball court and shooting baskets. Sometimes we will take our small ball to the park and play catch or kick ball.

We have danced to music in the house, and a few times we have done exercise videos, but they don't really like to do that.

BEFORE MY NEW WOL: They'd come over, I'd sit on couch and watch them play. Or...We'd go to the park and I'd sit on the bench and watch them play. BIG DIFFERENCE NOW.

[miaike90]

DS and I go for walks together at least 6 times a week, of course most times it's just to check the mail but it's exercise. Our mailbox is 7/10ths of a mile down our private drive and we have a few hilly spots to go over along the way. We started out allowing 15 minutes to make it to the mailbox and have been lowering that time every so often, Saturday we made it in 10 minutes. This is actually good for us to be doing as his bus stop for school is just past the mailbox and it wont be long before he's having to book it down to the bus stop for school again. We know from experience that there are going to be many days throughout the year that he will have to RUN to catch his bus.

He's also very active anyway with the closest friend being a mile away so he bike rides down there to play every few days or they'll come up here and go hiking around in the woods behind the house. We live on a 69 acre working horse/cattle ranch with a lot of it being wooded so we use walkie talkies a LOT around here to keep in touch with him and him with us. One of their favorite things to do is go see if they can find out where the deer have bedded down the night before and such.

Our favorite exercise is walking though, whether it be here at home or we drive somewhere to go hiking. Take the camera, pack a small lunch/snack, water bottles and go. When you get home or on the way home talking about all you've seen and/or collected is great.

[Desertthorn]

I think any exercise would be good, just getting out of the house to walk around....the beach; tidepooling, body surfing, walking in the sand :yes. the mall, an amusement park? We use to spend Sunday after church exploring and it was amazing what we could find to do just here in the Seattle area. There are hidden treasures all over. A flaming geyser, which turned out to be about an inch tall, Mima Mounds, a weird geological area that no one knows what they are, ferry rides (got ta walk around to check for whales) water falls, volksmarching. A zoo, hey you got ta walk to see the animals ignoring the tram.

[mklap1]

My kids go to the pool almost every day. Other than that, they are too sedentary in my opinion. They are all very thin though...I was too as a child. My sons play soccer in the spring and fall. Occasionally and I mean very occasionally, they will work out with me for a few minutes, but not really enough to get any benefit.

I have the Tae Bo Junior tape for them and I'm giving my daughter Tony Horton's workout for kids for Christmas. She will do those once every two weeks or so.

If I go out for a jog, it's a nightmare. My son wants to go in the jog stroller...he's 4. My daughter wants to wear roller blades. She's 7 and goes very slow and I have to help her up most of the way. So it ends up being really for her benefit alone that I go 'jogging'. Sometimes I sneak out of the house.

I do best with videos and I hate getting interrupted, but that's just part of being a mom, so it's not really their fault. I mean they do have legitimate reasons sometimes

I'm going to sign my daughter up for gymnastics in the fall.

Other than that, and being a role model. I'd say the fitness program for the kids isn't going all that strong. Maybe if we got rid of the GameCube.

Melissa