83 | Games to Keep You and Your Family Active

Each week in our Moms Raising Healthy Humans Community I provide everyone with a weekly task to focus on to help them make small lasting changes for a healthier lifestyle.

The other week I recommended going for a walk after dinner to help with stabilizing blood sugar and gut health.  You can listen to Episode 82 The Importance of Walking after dinner for more information.  

but it was discussed how dark it is at this time of year and how it can be difficult to get the kids up and out the door after dinner and if I have other tips to help keep you active.

-We discuss some tried and true games.
-Some board games
-fun made up games

Outline

Introduction to this episode.
0:09

How to get out of stagnant behaviors.
1:57

Hacky Sacks hacky sacks.
3:25

Games that are fun and get you moving.
5:15

Sock tag and floor is lava.
7:06

Sock tag and the balloon.
9:09

A lot of movement and laughing.
10:43

Mom’s Raising healthy humans facebook.
12:24

Head to www.movingthroughmidlife. com to learn more

Join our Free FB Community:
Moving through Midlife (Powered by Form Fit) | Facebook


or follow me on IG or Tik Tok
courtney_formfit

Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

Welcome to raising healthy humans. A podcast created for busy moms where you can easily find information on health and wellness for your family. Enjoy experts who share tips on how to raise children through each phase of life. Gather current information on nutrition and wellness and listen to Courtney, a health coach movement and posture specialist and founder of formfit. An active and supportive community where she helps busy moms move more on raising healthy humans podcast Courtney shares her personal life experiences, training, knowledge and conversations with other health and wellness experts so you can raise healthy humans. This week, I am going to cover some games to help keep you active. And this came about because each week in our moms raising healthy humans community over on Facebook, I provide everyone with a weekly task to focus on to help them make small lasting changes for a healthier lifestyle. The other week, I recommended which last week, if you listen to episode 82, I recommended going for a walk after dinner to help with stabilizing blood sugar and gut health. And you can listen to episode 82 the importance of walking after dinner for more information in regard to that, but it was discussed how dark it is at this time of year, and how it can be difficult to get the kids out of the house and going for a walk in the evening. So they were looking for other tips to help keep them active. And whether you're doing this after dinner to help with that blood sugar stabilization. Or whether you're just doing this midday whenever. Because it is important for us to move more, not just with exercise. But seriously, moving our body more throughout the day, we've got to get out of these stagnant behaviors that we have come to enjoy, honestly. So I come up came up with I would love to hear if you have your own. And you can add it into our moms raising healthy humans community over on Facebook, because I'm just giving you my ideas. And I'm sure many of you have ideas out there as well. And I'd love to hear them. And also the community would love to hear them as well, because we're looking for ideas. So the old tried and true games, you've got Twister, Simon Says basketball, what you can do is either we just got a basketball hoop for my son's bedroom $10 on Amazon, or you can grab I mean, if you don't want to spend any money on anything, go grab a crack trash can, you know, like a bathroom, trash can clean it out, grab a pair of socks, and you've got your basketball. Okay, and you can have fun with this. Moving throughout the room, everybody gets their own sock, you know, however you want to play basketball moving around. Another one is those hacky sacks, if you remember, those are terribly difficult, but some people are able to pop it up and keep it up. And then freeze dance is another one that I thought of which for the younger kids, they love this. So those are some of the tried and true and I'm sure there's numerous others, I was just kind of going through like, what have I done with my kids to make it fun. The next one is board games. So share, you have to get creative sometimes with your board games. I'm gonna give you a few that are more movement based. And then I'm going to share with you some that are just fun for the kids, and how you can create movement with them. So Beat the Parents. If you've played that, you'll know like there's definitely some activity involved with that. Throw throw burrito. This is one. We have only played this once, I think because it became extremely competitive in our house. So I can't remember all the details of how to play it. But I do remember there's lots of grabbing seeing who can grab the burrito first, and then you're trying to throw it at someone. Now, younger kids, this is probably better. It's because it's a little safer. When your kids get to be teens, it can become very dangerous, especially when you've got a teen and a dad very competitive with one another. I can't guarantee someone's not going to get hurt. So Oh, that would be throw throw, burrito, ultra dash, this has always been one of our favorites when the kids were younger, their little discs that you can place, I like to place them all in separate rooms. And then the kids have this, they get this handheld thing that presses down over the disk. And it'll tell them like red. So they have to go find the red disc, and punch, you know, the, the, the handheld thing you'll see it if you go look for the handheld thing over the disk, and then that will then tell them the next color to go for. And there's like three different ways you can do it like as a relay, you can see how fast you do it. But this one's a fun one, to kind of make it you know, like a competitive thing for the kids to see who can do it fast, as fast as possible, or before the other. So that one's a lot of fun as well and definitely get you moving. Now these other ones are games that are fun. They can be played sitting down. But I would encourage you to get up off your bottoms, and stand around a table to play them. Because it changes the experience. And if you've ever like stood around and played a game, you'll know that, like there tends to be more jumping when you win. And there tends to be more activity and moving around. Grasp by standing up, it changes the game and the experience of the game completely. So some games that you can do this way. Taco goat cheese pizza, I was telling someone the other day, this is not my favorite game, because you get really hurt again, if you have teenagers. My son smacks my hands so hard. And then this is, like I said, You can do this sitting down. It is a fun game. But just be careful with your cans because it will hurt. But adding activity to this, because there is a lot of like hand movements that you're doing. To do this standing kind of creates a little bit more fun with it. 10 z, same thing. I think I've spoken about this in a past episode, that is dice, hen dice, and you roll them. Again standing up creates a little bit more activity and movement. When you're playing this Jenga, same thing. And the game of wolf that's like a trivia game, but you kind of go into packs. So you can either be the lone wolf with the trivia game, or you grab your pack, and you play together as a team. So there's a little bit more movement with this game, because you have to move over to your PAC. And that's kind of why I put that there. It's fun for I definitely would say older kids because it is trivia based. But that's a fun one as well. And then fun made up games floor is lava, you've seen this, maybe you've seen this on YouTube or your kids have that's you know, tends to be a fun game for the younger ones sock tag where you grab socks. And depending on how you feel about running around in your house, you can use your socks to throw them at each other. And basically play like tag with a sock rebound jumping. If you have one of those mini trampolines, we always do fun games. And this has to do with being in the pool. But we'll do like dives and jumps and see who can make the fanciest jump into the pool. And you can do that kind of thing with a rebounder. Just jumping on the rebounder and trying to get fancy without hurting yourself. Obviously, you could even with younger kids do this on the bed. If you're okay with that. I tend to be more movement based. So rather than aesthetic. So my family has always been able to kind of run around and play in the house. Rather than having to keep it prim and proper, much to the chagrin of my mother. I told you about sock tag, our favorite most favorite game, we play it to this day. And we don't play it often. It just tends to be one of those things like if someone gets a balloon and brings it home, this is what we play. But you can blow up a balloon. You don't need a helium balloon. Just blow up a balloon. And then the goal is to keep the balloon off the floor. Now we create little challenges with one not challenges but where we have to like the same person can can't hit it twice. So it'll be usually it's me and the kids will all play, we're moving through the kitchen, the dining room and the living room like this is a very active game. And the goal is to hit the hit the balloon up in the air, when then the next person, whoever it doesn't have to be like, you don't have to go in a circle as to this time, it's Mason, this time it's Grady, this, you know, it doesn't have to be circular. It's just, it can't be that same person. Again, you also cannot hit the balloon down. Because if anybody misses it, whoever was the last one to hit, it gets the point. And we usually play to like, eight or 10. But there is a ton of movement, there is a ton of laughing because people are like diving to get the balloon, you know, and then people, we don't really run into each other. But you know, two people are trying to make sure that the balloon doesn't get hit. And then if you're also, of course, that person, the one who's hitting it, they're trying to get points. So they're trying to push it. Like if we're all in the dining room, they're trying to hit it so that it goes into the kitchen so that we're racing to get into the kitchen to hit it, it is a lot of fun, we will spend so much time in the evening playing this. So that is like if you play nothing else play that one game, okay. But those are some of the ideas that I have for helping you create more activity with some of the games that you're playing. Again, if you can't get outside, for whatever reason, do some of these games, it also will tremendously help bring the camaraderie into your household. And, you know, I'm just thinking of this right now. I have, you know, the teen years are interesting years. This is when your children start to kind of pull away from you. And we're dealing with some of that right now. So I'm thinking to myself, if this might be a good time to go grab a balloon, bring it back into the household. Because this always gets us laughing together, interacting a little bit more. And it just, even though there's no talking or anything, it just makes you feel like you're part of the family. So that is my ideas. And make sure to join us over in the moms raising healthy humans community on Facebook. That's about four to share your ideas. If you have any ideas about games that help you stay active, you and your family stay active. Make sure to let us know the ones I'm talking about today are inside. So let us know about what you have found is a fun game for playing inside. And I look forward to meeting you over there. Have a wonderful day and make sure to keep moving thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast. I hope you found this information valuable and hope that you can immediately use some of the information that was provided. Make sure to check out the show notes for all the links that we discussed today. We would also love for you to come join us over on our moms raising healthy humans community on Facebook to provide us with information moving forward with the podcast. We also provide you with a monthly focus to help you and your family live a healthier and more fulfilling life. And if you're interested in diving deeper with us, we offer different memberships to participate in so that you can get to know us on a more personal level. We offer monthly challenges, live events on demand and live workouts, meal plans and so much more. Just head to form fit online.com to learn more. And as always make sure to keep moving