Woo-hoo it’s the holidays, no more alarm and no more school run.  But, if you’re used to walking, scooting or cycling to school, you can find there’s a large activity hole left to fill in your day. Children need an hour of vigorous exercise every day, ideally more, so how do you fit it in during the holidays without the school run? Here are our fast and furious tips

Dance fight!

Telling the kids they have to dance for an hour is probably going to be met with a series of ‘urghhhhs’ and ‘do we have to?’  However, swap it to a dance fight and the competitive edge can prick their little ears up, especially if they’ve watched Despicable Me 3 Now obviously this won’t include the fighting part, so if your children are literal maybe change fight to battle, but the idea is it’s a face-off of sibling against sibling, parent against child or parent against parent. Pick a tune to start and then the other opponent has to choose a different, better track to dance to. If you feel like getting techie you can video the action or create a dance fight playlist.  The playlist can then be used to signal the next battle, by the title track being played and calls to assemble made. This list of songs should give you some great ones to pick from So get off the couch and Jungle Boogie!

Sports day

  • Sack races are a great way of getting the kids bouncing from one end of the garden to the other. If you don’t have sacks, large pillow cases will work.
  • An egg and spoon race, with a real egg if you want to up the ante, is always fun.
  • Skipping is great exercise, but can be hard for little ones, so use a hula-hoop instead.
  • Throwing the bean bag, hurdles over cushions or long jump are all easy to do in the garden.

It’s Ninja time

Set up a Ninja trail through the house. From blocking exits with cushions, to using low stick masking tape to create a web they have to climb through, to tying chairs together with string, hiding toys in duvet covers or tunnels under beds. In short, think of all those things the kids would love to do but fear the ‘what have you done to my house speech’.  Perfect for a rainy day to keep them occupied for hours and great for getting them to use their little bodies. Just make sure you hide the Ninja equipment afterwards, so they can’t create their own Ninja network when you’re not looking!