Let's Get Moving: How to Keep your Kids Fit Through Winter

As the days shorten and the old Jack Frost settles in for a long visit, it’s more difficult to motivate yourself to get outside and have fun. Your natural inclination is to hole up at home and eat comfort food, but this isn’t healthy or productive. Here are some practical and fun ways to keep your family fit this winter.

WINTER SPORTS

If you haven’t taken up a winter sport, then this is the perfect time to find something you enjoy doing. Skiing, snow shoeing and skating are great traditional winter sports to keep yourself busy. If you want to do something more local, taking walks around your neighborhood or in natural areas can be really interesting over the winter. You can also toboggan with younger students and have snowball fights. Check out these snowball gloves which you can make with an old ball and a glue gun.

WINTER PROJECTS

When you have a goal for the winter, it’s easier to motivate your students to get outside. Take a look at this amazing igloo. This was built from ice bricks that were frozen in old orange juice cartons. It took several months to make, but ensured hours of outdoor winter fun. If an ice igloo seems like too much effort, make a snow fort instead.

GEOCACHING

If you live in a place with no snow, try Geocaching. This is a super fun game where participants create a geocache and hide it in a secure natural location. This location is then posted to the Geocaching website here. You can use your smartphone or GPS to locate a geocache. Fill in the log book and take an item from the cache and leave another one for the next visitor. Visit the website for instructions on how to play the game and what items are acceptable.

NEW HOBBIES

Swimming - I love swimming in the winter. It’s a great all-body workout and its fun too. You can join a gym or your local YMCA to get access to an indoor pool. Games like water polo and volley ball also take place at indoor pools or get your students ready for the summer with swimming lessons.

Dance Classes - No matter their age or music preference, there is a dance class that’s perfect for your student. From ballet to hip hop, learning some new moves will make them more confident, it will improve coordination and is a great workout too.

Indoor Sports - From martial arts to gymnastics, having an indoor sport option that your student enjoys is a great way to keep them fit this winter. If they aren’t into sports, get a gym membership so that they can swim, workout or join an exercise class.

Five best Board Games for Middle and High School Students

Holidays can be long and when rainy days or long trips confine teens to the home, there are many games which can encourage them to spend some time with family members. This gives them a break from their computers and phones and gives you all an opportunity to have some family fun while learning.

Settlers of Catan

This board game is intense action mixed with resource management. Each game takes about an hour to play and can accommodate up to six players with an extension pack. Players must gain resources such as sheep, wheat, wood and brick to build settlements, armies and roads. This is a strategy game which teaches students to think ahead and use their resources and bargaining skills wisely. Settlers of Catan has been voted the best game of the year in the US and Europe. This game is very engaging and every game is completely different from the last.

Say Anything

This is an excellent way to get your teens talking and helps them to build social skills. Players will have to practice excellent communication skills to win and it helps you to get to know each other a little better. The game takes about 35 minutes to play and is easy to follow: 1) Ask a question from the card you draw. Some examples of questions include: “What’s the best movie of all time?” or “If I could have a BIG anything, what would it be?” 2) All the players write an answer and turn it face-up. 3) You choose which answer you like most (this is based on wit, style and accuracy). The players then try to guess which answer you picked. This is a great game for getting to know family members better and it.s fun to think of new and original answers to the questions.

Ticket to Ride

This game revolves around the adventures of Phileas Fogg and players must collect railway stations to connect routes around North America. The longer the route, the more points the player accumulates. Additional points can be accrued when you fulfill your Destination Tickets by connecting two distant cities. The player who builds the longest continuous railway also gets additional points. Games take 30-60 minutes to play and are a great way to inspire a love of travel and improve knowledge of North American geography.

Cranium

This is a great way for the whole family to play together because Cranium relies on a whole bunch of skills from general knowledge, humming tunes, charades and drawing to sculpting play dough. No matter the age of participants, they can all contribute to their teams with their own special talents. The fact that this game has so many different ways to answer a question keeps it fresh and exciting. Many questions are for team play which means all the teams get to participate, keeping the game fun and exciting.

Equate

This is Scrabble for math lovers. The board functions in much the same ways as Scrabble with tiles which contain numbers and equations. You can help students to improve math and especially algebra skills by playing this game. The board can accommodate 2-4 players from ages 8 and up.