Children and sport

All parents know that healthy children have a lot of energy inside, so sport for young persons is extremely important. When children run, jump and climb on trees they build their own body muscles, improve fitness and condition. Today I would like to show you how are we taking care about sport in our lives.
First thing I would like to show you is: where we are going for sport classes. Later I will talk about which sport all parents can perform with your own children during simple walks, in playground or in home. And for the end I will show you our last sport-trip.

When Ewa finished 3 years we started going on the swimming pool once a week. It was great idea, because Ewa enjoyed "swimming" lessons in pool. I think swimming pool have a good influence for spine problems, movement, strength and helps improving general physical capabilities. During swimming lessons Ewa learned responsibility, courage, discipline and self-reliance. From more physical side, children who are going swim in swimming pool regularly have a bigger immunity for cold or flu. Classes for Ewa are very exiting and they giving her a lot of fun, and I am very happy too. After classes and medium, healthy, on-the-go supper we are going back home with our car and usually Ewa fall asleep soon and I have free afternoon.

Our second classes is sport gymnastics. Ewa loves it and she would like going for this classes everyday if she only could. From this activities Ewa learns how to perform front flip, standing on hands, squats and a lot of seemingly extreme exercises which requires concentration, discipline and willpower. In every lesson children stretch, run and jump so If your child has a lot of energy and you can't restrain it, this type of classes are perfect for your children.

Now I would like to show sport activity for everyone who can walk. Only requirement is playground or place with a little bit of grass. One of the most popular run and catch activity is when we have one person who try to catch another one. The next great play is "fly and spider". Adult person, or one of the children is in role of spider and says "flies fly". Then all children are running freely behind back of this person. And suddenly spider says "spider is coming" and in this moment all children stops and can't move. Spider is checking if all flies are standing still without movement. If someone move - he/she fails and he becomes a spider for next round. If not, current spider says "flies fly" and round repeats.
There is no equipment for sport for kids, and I believe it shouldn't be. Places like playgrounds, where they can safely climb, hang, swing are more than enough. There is a lot of exercises for balance, strength and agility.
Playing with different balls they can learn how to score the goal (accuracy) or learn how to catch the ball and throw.
Sandbox enables creativity, which is very important (I mentioned it in my previous post) later in various adult activities. For example: how to build a fortress? What we should do to build a big and strong fortress body from sand? Should we use an water for this or not?
Playing outside can be also extended by using bicycle, scooter which improves learning balance or making a quick decisions.
When it is raining, we totally should let children play in raining water "pools".
On winter we can use sled, ski and ice skates and we can of course build a snow man. We can have a snowball war.

We can also perform sport activities at home, when weather is extremely bad or we can not go outside from different reasons. We can build a obstacle course from chairs, bottles with water, small ball and spoon. With these three things you can build a lot of obstacles.
In the mean time you can add a few push-ups, squats and jumps with both legs or only with one. There can also be jumps with a teddy bear between legs and task to not to release it (try if your 3 or 4 year old kid can do that, it should be very hard for them, but funny at the same time).
When you start measure time for one round of obstacle course, you will immediately see how fun it is and how fast your child want to beat its "time record". You can also made a medals for them. When you will perform decoration ceremony, huge smiles will be present all the time :)

For the end I would like to recommend you a great sport trip, like canoeing (http://www.zabikruk.pl/kajakiem_po_gdansku/ - it is example canoeing agency in our city - Gdańsk). Ewa knows now, how difficult is to row, which requires strength, endurance and coordination. But she also knows that it is fun too, so she is quite motivated to prepare for time when she will be rowing with us ;).

Sport is everywhere, you should encourage your children for doing it because it have a big influance for their body how it looks like and how it feels.

P.S.
Our last experiment which I would like to show you. A maze for small balls which you can build your own.