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Keeping Young Children Active

How to engage children during the long winter months

By Elinor Spokes

With its frigid temperatures, grey skies and short days, winter in Baltimore can seem endless. For kids, this coldest season’s often depressing conditions and hard-packed, frozen backyards do not lend themselves to outdoor play. It’s not difficult for youngsters to become restless and rambunctious or idle and sedentary while waiting for warmer temperatures to melt the winter blues away.

This presents a challenge to parents: Do I make my child go outside even f it is cold? What activities should I suggest for them to avoid boredom? How much exercise should they get to counter their indoor time? What can I do so the children don’t end up fighting with one another?  How can I help make winter fun?

Hakeem Clark, team leader of the Parisi Speed School at Lifebridge Health and Fitness, suggests that for kids, exercise and staying active should be all about fun, staying moving and active.  “Just because it is cold doesn’t mean you can’t go outside,” he says.

“Getting kids engaged and getting them out of the malaise of not doing anything is most important,” he adds. “Being fit is not about exercise but about being active. The more active you are, the more you will want to do.”

If your kids are spending a lot of time on the sofa with little activity, he recommends getting them to do at least 20 to 30 minutes of exercise expending some energy: Doing jumping jacks while jumping up and down with cans in their hands for extra weight, creating a four square court out of socks, or simply dancing around. “If your heart rate hasn’t changed, you are not exercising,” he states.

Winter months also can be conducive to an increase in eating and, with less activity, more weight gain, for kids and adults. “You want your kids to be cognizant of what they are eating and the effect of sweets on their bodies. As a parent, oversee what your kids are eating and limit their intake of sweets, and provide healthier choices for them,” says Clark. “The better you eat, the more energy you will have.”

Lisa Budlow, a Reisterstown mother of five children, ages 12, 9, 8 and 2-year-old twins, says she strives to keep her kids active in the winter by sending them outside as often as they are willing to be outdoors. She notes that her family is fortunate to live in a neighborhood with a lot of kids so that often her children have a reason to go out. Last year’s back-to-back blizzards made Budlow even more grateful for her kid-filled neighborhood when all the kids would go out together to make snowmen and enjoy the wonder of the season.

In the Budlow family basement, there is a basketball hoop, a miniature slide and a small trampoline to provide ample opportunity for active play. Her older children participate in dance classes and recreational team sports, but also love board games and card games.

Her energetic toddler’s favorite game is “Get Them,” an activity in which they run around the house and engage their older siblings in a hot pursuit. Budlow says that her children get the most fun out of this kind of unstructured play and that for this reason, jumping on the furniture and playing with the couch pillows are never discouraged. 

She and husband Paul feel strongly that school is so structured, children need the opportunity to play freely. “Follow the kids’ lead and let them chose activities. I don’t have my own agenda when I play with my kids,” she adds. “They can’t fit into our mold, but we can fit into theirs. I let them decide what to do.”

Jane Sims, a Sparks mother of three children ages 4, 6 and 8, says her two-and-a-half acre property provides numerous opportunities for outdoor winter adventure. Despite the sometimes harsh elements of winter, her 8-year-old son Benjamin loves to explore their land and build fires in the fire pit they built.  Spending summers at Nature Camp in Monkton, Md, Benjamin acquired an interest in fire-making techniques and a true appreciation for the outdoors. Sims says Benjamin will spend hours collecting wood and interesting rocks, building structures, and gardening.

Avid gardeners, the family cultivates many vegetable beds on their property. For year-round growing, husband Brian Sims built cold frame greenhouses in which they grow lettuces and Swiss chard in winter. Benjamin loves to tend to the gardens, picking the vegetables and pruning; Sims says this is a wonderful family activity at any time of year.

Her daughters, Madeline and Juliet, are more apt to be indoors in cold weather, putting on plays and staging puppet shows. But when their brother makes a fire, they are often outside with him helping to stoke the fire and keep everyone warm.

Winter also provides opportunities for outdoor experiments. Observing the effect of freezing temperatures on their home-grown vegetables, for example, or predicting how long it will take to freeze other things and charting the results. 

Sims suggests that the winter months lend themselves to exploration, when many tree branches and limbs have fallen, providing an endless supply of material for building things. When Benjamin studied Native American structures at the Park School, where he is a third-grader, he discovered new ideas for projects to build in their yard. 

“Build or create points of interest outside in your yard, which will draw your children out of your home,” recommends Sims for a more creative winter experience. 

Pikesville mother of three Ellen Wruble Hakim takes advantage of many community-based activities with her family to keep them active and on the go during winter. Since her 8-year-old daughter Makenna takes classes at a local gym, the whole family can participate in the family gym time there at no additional cost. 

The Hakims also take advantage of family activities offered at both the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art on the weekends. When they are not out on the town, Hakim tries to limit the amount of time her kids watch television.

Recently the Hakim children discovered a website which allows them to play checkers against their grandfather in Florida. They simultaneously talk to their grandfather via cell phone while strategizing and plotting their next moves. Hakim finds that this is great for the kids’ hand-eye coordination as well as learning a new skill.

She notes that she and husband Dan try to get their kids out. They do everything they can to keep them healthy, realizing the benefits of more active play; but it is a challenge, she says, because they live in a very busy neighborhood without a lot of open space. 

Parisi School’s Clark reminds parents that keeping their children fit is also engaging in fun with them. “Most kids look up to their parents to set a good example,” he says. “It is important to start your kids down the road to a healthy lifestyle. For children, that begins with gaining enjoyment through their parents and understanding wellness through an active family lifestyle.”