Exercise is Like Brushing Your Teeth

Raise your hand if you are a person that commits (or recommits) themselves to healthier living in the new year. I myself, am raising my hand this year for my whole family (kids included). Even though I have been committed to fitness and health since my mid-twenties (my husband and I even met at the gym), life still happens and I find myself out of my fitness routine from time to time.

I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions for myself, but what I do love is a fresh start! I love that at any given moment, we can start over! With New Year’s resolutions I just feel like there’s so much pressure to be perfect and meet the goal and talk about it and if you fail, it’s just huge disappointment.

I’d rather put a stronger emphasis on goals for each day. Afterall, we’re not promised a new year, but every time we wake up in the morning, it’s a new opportunity to do better than we did the day before.

Since fitness is a part of our lives, we make it a priority to teach our kids the benefits of exercise; that it can be fun and that it’s as necessary as brushing your teeth or praying. We simply must do these things to be healthy and feel good. Let’s all admit this together: doing what is healthy and right, is not necessarily easy to do all the time. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s focus on making it fun and part of a routine so then it becomes and stays a habit!

Since the start of winter, we’ve struggled getting into a fitness routine with our kids. My husband and I both workout around 5am so the kids are still sleeping! When they get up, we jump into our homeschool routine! During the nicer weather months, I just kick the kids outside in the afternoon (in a very loving way of course). As Wyoming kicked itself into high wind season though, going outside is just not ideal and on many days, not an option.

I love how the most obvious thing slaps you across the face as if to say, “Hey dummy, why aren’t you doing it this way?”. I had this amazing slap in the face last week. We homeschool. With homeschool, we have the freedom to teach our kids anything we want; when and how we want to! Since fitness is a staple in our lives, I realized I needed to make it part of our curriculum just like bible study, math and writing: that was a big fat DUH moment. How could I have not thought about this before?

I’m trying to cut myself some slack here, because even though we’re in our third year of schooling at home, I still have so much to learn in terms of the actual concept of homeschooling. More to come on that in a later post!

With this epiphany, I added exercise to our schedule in the morning instead of leaving it for the afternoon when school is done and they have free time. Afterall, shouldn’t health be our number one priority? That’s why I made it part of my routine first thing in the morning. If we don’t have our health, life can turn sideways real fast. This next part is really where I shine a excel (and then she tootted her own horn): I got organized and creative and made a plan! These things by the way, get me SUPER excited!!

With the help of Pinterest and the internet I came up with some great ideas that are fun for kids and can be tailored to your family’s fitness ability and kids’ ages.

First, I scheduled exercise in. This isn’t as necessary in the summer because the weather is so nice and we’re always on the go and very active, but Wyoming winters will take your breath away (literally); it’s just not realistic to be as active outside in the winter months.

Remember, scheduling in exercise is just like scheduling in brushing teeth or praying. The only difference is that things like that have become habits, so we don’t refer to it as scheduling in time for your teeth. We teach our kids from a young age that it’s just part of life! Also, we teach our kids to do these things at very specific times of the day (e.g., in the morning, before a meal, before bed, etc.) It’s literally the same thing!

Do yourself a favor and don’t complicate this or make it long and drawn out. Set aside 15 minutes a day to start out, but again, it must be the same time every single day. This is how you form a habit!

Next, I tweaked games that I had learned in the past as well as found new ones online! Finally, and perhaps more exciting than getting a plan on paper with pretty colors and graphics, I got to use my laminator!! Yup, 2023 is starting off the right way for me!

This first game was introduced to me as, “The Deck of Pain” by a group of soldiers that I got to workout with when I was a contractor for the Wyoming Military Department. I changed the name because, well, Deck of Pain might not appeal to children!

Here’s the Deck of fun. It’s one of the easiest games because you only have to choose four exercises. If fitness is something that intimidates you, think outside the box and keep it simple (i.e., dancing, jumping jacks, etc.). Each exercise gets assigned to a suit. Then you draw cards and do that exercise. For example, if you choose sit ups for diamonds and you draw the five of diamonds, then you do 5 sit ups. It’s that easy! Go through the whole deck or set a timer to end after 15 or 20 minutes. I laminated this game so they can use a dry erase marker to write down the exercise and reuse the template.

Roll the Dice at the Zoo can be geared toward younger kids because of all the fun animals moves they get to do (bonus points for animal sounds)!

I love Bingo for Screen time for the kids who want to watch more TV or play more video games. Have them complete a Bingo to earn their extra time.

Lastly, Alphabet Soup is incredibly versatile because there is an endless supply of different words to spell to create a workout. The bonus on this one is that it can be a fun way to practice spelling with kids too!

Fitness shouldn’t be a punishment. We need to be teaching our kids that it’s just another routine thing we must do. Childhood obesity affected more than 14 million children between 2017 and 2020 according to the CDC. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I can see this is a problem.

Maybe as a parent you’re not “into” fitness at all. What better way to spend time with your kids, than starting a great habit together! You taught them how to brush their teeth and maybe you even remind them to this very day to do this mundane task. You remind them to say their prayers before bed or you teach them to lead a prayer in thanks before a meal. My hope is that with these fun games, exercise can be a similar teaching moment that can last a lifetime and that everyone can feel the benefits from.