Fun Exercise Breaks for Kids During Remote Learning

Exercise

Aug 27

Welcome to 2020, where your school supply list may include a bottle of wine or two. Remote learning is coming again, while many of us still haven’t recovered from this past spring. But, we’re hoping to spread a little optimism that maybe some parts of remote learning can be fun.

It’s certainly not easy to think creatively when we are juggling work and kids (or even just kids!), so we thought we’d take the pressure off and come up with some fun ideas for you. You’ll want to encourage frequent breaks throughout the “school day” to keep kids active and improve their ability to focus—at least 10 minutes every hour.

Here are some fun, physical exercise breaks you can do with your child.

Animal walks. Have your child choose an animal and imitate its walk across the room and back. You and/or siblings will guess which animal, and take turns.
Obstacle courses. Some props you can use are hula hoops (to leap over or to use), a step stool, pillow cushions, a blanket fort to crawl under, a broomstick, books to jump over, etc. If you want to get more elaborate, you can even use painter’s tape on the floor. We prefer easy clean up!
Dance party. Each child gets to pick a song at the beginning of the work hour so that they have something to look forward to at break time (and so no time gets wasted arguing or searching for music). Everyone dances as crazy as they can. If this gets stale, you can try freeze dance instead!
Duck, Duck, Goose. Our grade school teachers knew what they were doing. Duck, Duck, Goose is the perfect silly game to blow off some steam. You’ll need at least 3 players for this one though.
Jumping competition. If you have downstairs neighbors, you may want to go outside for this one or do it on a rug or yoga mat. Take turns measuring how far your child(ren) can jump, then how high. Then, you can put on a timer for 15 seconds and see how many jumps each of you can fit in before the timer goes. Whoever wins the most challenges wins the jumping competition this time around.
Dance challenge. Not to be confused with a dance party, a dance challenge is a game! The first player does a dance move, and the second player repeats that move and adds a new one, and the game continues like this, adding onto the dance. All players have to remember the order of the dance moves, or they’re “out.”
Yoga. Carve out a little relaxation, stretching, and deep breathing time. This is equally beneficial for parents! (Stretching, for example, is super important.) If you’re not able to supervise, Cosmic Kids yoga on YouTube is a great hands-off kids yoga class that uses storytelling and even some favorite Disney characters.