The past two years, I have enjoyed walking, running, swimming, playing outside more & more because of one little active daughter! Every opportunity that she had as a young toddler to pull me outside she did. We strolled. We just walked around the yard. We visited the park and more! The fresh air was invigorating. The transformation of my almost 40 body was promising. The excitement of her words, “Look! My Mommy is going to run now!” encouraged me.
Sophia didn’t need a project to encourage her to move—-she does anyways! However, I wanted to implement a project with her that would engage us in conversations about fitness, healthy choices, learning and more! Thus, I created a little runner’s tag labeled “Sophia in Action“. This summer as we vacationed in Greece, we wrote out numbers on each tag. Each number signifies an hour of fitness or movement—walking, swimming, jumping, biking, or other physical fitness activity. Together, we moved. Only after one or two days in Greece, Sophia indicated that her ‘bottom’ hurt—her ‘butt cheeks’! Different muscles were engaged in new terrain!
Sophia took a Zumba class with me this summer! We learned about volleyball. She swam in the oceans and swimming pools. She walked up mountains and hiked to the village stores and more! When we returned home, we continued our fitness goal of 100 hours while playing at the park, swimming, walking to preschool, taking tumble and cheer, and more! We continue to write in the hourly fitness number. Our goal may take us a few months or more but most importantly she’s moving and learning as we work on this project together.
When we finish the project, she’ll have snapshots of herself to see how her own body has transformed through her fitness goal. She’ll also have a mini book filled with fitness ‘tags’ dedicated to each hour of fitness that she engaged in throughout this time frame (we didn’t set a specific time frame since she moves anyway but you may want to set a specific time frame if you are working on this project with your child/family). Additionally, at the end of this project Sophia will have a “100 day project” that she can share with her classmates at school when they celebrate the 100th day of school!
Not only will a fitness goal be achieved at the end of this project but we’ll have learned about various degrees of physical activity, healthy food options, numbers in consecutive order, one to one correspondence (one tag per one hour of fitness), how a real marathon works (with our attendance to the St. Jude Fun Run in Memphis later this year), & more!
How do you encourage your child to stay fit? And/or intertwine his/her learning with fitness?
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