Olympic Family Fitness

For the past few weeks we've been talking about the Olympics non-stop. We've made medals, rings, an outdoor arena, a torch and created an obstacle course (look for that post coming soon), but we haven't talked much about what goes into being an Olympian. My theme for Kids Bloggers Go Olympics is Health/Fitness and the Olympics was a great way to explain those to Sweet P.

While thumbing through our copy of My First Encyclopedia, I found a page about Sports that included the Olympic Games. I set it aside and gathered a few other things we'd need for our Family Fitness activity.

In December I won a giveaway for Family Time Fitness' PE curriculum, but we haven't used any of it yet. I thought this would be the perfect way to introduce her to fitness and the importance of exercise.

The whole family went up to her room (which has a pretty big space for jumping/moving around). Sweet P and I sat on her bed (the Farmer and Sprout took the floor) and read the excerpt from the encyclopedia about the games and a portion about healthy eating. We'd also eaten the Olympic rings that day so I talked about how each of the things she ate provided vitamins, nutrients and minerals to help her grow healthy bones and strong muscles.

I asked, "And do you know who has strong muscles? Olympians!"

And then we flexed our muscles. Don't forget your intimidating face!

I explained that Olympic athletes have to work really hard and exercise almost every day to get to the Olympics. And while we aren't training for the Olympics, we can still exercise and increase our cardiovascular fitness (I'm sure my 3 year old really knew what that meant!).

After reading, we turned on some music (This Land is Your Land) and started the fitness lesson. The lesson included a warm-up, activity and cool-down. We modified it a great deal for our 3 year old's attention span, but I think she got a big kick out of all of us doing arm circles and leg lifts!

We bear crawled, frog jumped and then made a river with two ribbon belts to jump over. I talked about the importance of cooling down at the end as we stretched our legs and then she played with the river for another 15 minutes. The entire lesson probably took 15 minutes from start to finish.

We had such a fun time and we can't wait to do the next lesson! I'm all about teaching your child that exercise is fun!

Thanks so much to Inspiration Laboratories for passing the torch to me! I'm passing the torch to Living at the Whiteheads Zoo!

Join the Kids Bloggers Go Olympics Blog Hop and link up YOUR Olympic activities!