Exercising with Kids

First, let me just say that my favorite way to exercise with my kids is by going outside and doing things like horseback riding, hiking and swimming.

That said, I don't own a horse and only get to do that when we're lucky enough to visit family with horses AND it is so terribly cold here right now that hiking is out of the question . . .swimming would be lovely but again, terribly cold here and not practical at all.

So what's a Momma to do?

This is what we've been doing lately since we are stuck in the house.

We set the timer for five minutes and during those five minutes we stretch.

Next we set the timer for ten minutes and we go downstairs and run around the basement, back and forth until we've run back and forth 10 times.

Then the girls hold my feet and I do fifteen sit-ups.  This is an improvement from the ten sit-ups that I originally struggled with!  Then I hold my daughter's feet and she does her 25 sit-ups.

Next we do jumping jacks and after that we run stairs . . .by this time we are feeling a little winded.

Just to mix it up we've been researching other things to do and I like the idea of jump ropes.

It seems like everyday we come up with something new.  Today our toddler brought us a stuffed animal and we invented a game where  we threw the toy back and forth, but we had to jump either before or during the throw.

Really, a lot of exercising with kids is trying to make it fun and change things up.

My daughter really likes competing, either against me or herself.  She broke her sit-up record today and will probably add another one or more on tomorrow.

Another thing that makes me really smile is a page that I stumbled on the day before yesterday.  The author of this blog found 45 days worth of free exercise videos and so E and I tried the first one yesterday.  We didn't do the whole thing but it was fun to do something that I felt like I could do in the privacy of my home that I wouldn't want to do anywhere else because I'm quite sure I wasn't doing it nearly as fluidly as the leader!  And since my navel isn't all flat and glittery . . .well, that also made me really glad I was doing this in the privacy of my home . . .still quite nice to have someone telling me what to do instead of me trying to come up with moves on my own!

Click on  THIS!! to see what I'm talking about.

If I come up with more great ideas I'll be sure to let you know.

Now that's it for this entry.  I hope you and your kiddos like moving together, too.  It's so good for everybody!

~ Jennifer