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winter activities for children

sledding, Fuel up to play 60, how to stay healthy, keeping kids active this winter

Disclosure: This is a compensated campaign in collaboration with National Dairy Council Fuel Up To Play 60 en español and Latina Bloggers Connect.

How can we motivate our children to stay active as the winter months are fast approaching? In the summer it’s easy because who doesn’t love to be outside? We live for spending summer days riding bikes, jumping on trampolines, swimming at the pool, riding the zip line and doing flips in the back yard. But winter is something different entirely.

Once the temperatures start to drop, the outside just doesn’t seem as appealing. In autumn it’s great because you still can go for bike rides, walks and jump in the leaves. You can do everything you would do in the summer months, only more comfortably because the weather is better. I don’t know about you, but my family prefers being active when the air is a little crisper and there are fewer bugs to contend with. What can I say, I have girls and bugs are not our favorite of God’s creatures.

But once it starts snowing and hitting below freezing temps, we all prefer the comfort of the indoors. Truth be told, we like to gather around the fire inside and play board games. I like to think of these as the mental acuity months. December through February, those are the months we like to pump up our brains and give our bodies the winter off, but that’s not really sensible.

I mean, sure snuggling by the fire while sipping on hot coco with your favorite people sounds like the perfect afternoon while the snow is falling all around you, but is it really good for your body? No.

There are certainly things you can do during the cold weather months to keep yourself and your children active. Believe me when spring and summer creep back up on you, you’ll all be glad that you kept the physical momentum of the summer going. Your body will thank you.

That’s where programs like Fuel Up to Play 60 come in. It’s the largest in­-school health and wellness program founded by the National Dairy Council and the NFL, in collaboration with the USDA, which empowers today’s youth to lead healthier lives. It encourages all students to live healthier lifestyles through good nutrition and physical activity. Fuel Up to Play 60 knows that one in four children in the U.S. is Latino and they want to ensure that this dynamic and fast‐growing group receives the best tools to help them succeed.

Fuel up to play 60, how to stay healthy, keeping kids active this winter

Fuel Up to Play 60 playbook offers several tools for families to make healthy changes in both the way they eat and how they can add activity into their lives liek smarter snacking or joining the 100-mile club. It also provides online resources and hosts events with NFL players to inspire kids. Even better, the recently launched Fuel Up to Play 60 en español extension made possible with the help of PepsiCo.Foundation, now offers Spanish language resources, aimed at getting Hispanic parents and communities involved in health, nutrition and fitness inside and outside of the classroom.The Spanish-language Fuel Up to Play 60 playbook can inspire parents with ways to lead an active lifestyle at home

Here are some other things you can do with your kids to keep you both healthy this fall and winter:

  • Rake the leaves all into a giant leaf pile and take turns jumping into it. Rake. Repeat. This can go on for hours.
  • Go to a pumpkin patch/ corn maze and walk all the mazes. Walking a pumpkin patch looking for the perfect pumpkin and exploring the corn mazes can easily and almost unnoticeably eat up 2 hours of activity time.

Once the snow starts coming down is when the real fun begins. Here are a few of our family favorites:

 

  • Get dressed in all of your snow gear and head to the neighborhood golf course and tube down the hills. Getting dressed and walking around in 10 pounds of snow gear will burn a lot of calories on its own, but the walking up and down the hills will definitely put a dent in your daily caloric burn.
  • A family snowball fight or snowman building session will definitely burn some calories while making great memories.
  • Another great family activity is cross-country skiing throughout the neighborhood or ice-skating.
  • And if the kids are complaining of being bored, there is always the tried and true, no fail calorie burner…shoveling snow, but I think if given the choice, the kids would much rather build snowmen.
  • Just because there is snow outside doesn’t mean you need to stay inside and not move. If you are inside, why not try roller skating, indoor swimming or just really fun family game of Just Dance?

The point is that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do something with your children so you’re all around for a long time to keep on making all of those awesome memories. In fact, you can have unforgettable ones by going on a skiing trip to gorgeous resorts like the Tamarck Resort close to McCall.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of National Dairy Council and Latina Bloggers Connect. The opinions and text are all mine.

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