Exercise for Children

I do not active in sports, rarely do any exercise in a year~ …Haa…so it seems hard for a mum like me to teach kids sports and exercise, not talent in this field. After making some “research” online, I had make a short summary as below as a “reminder” for myself to get “more active”in exercise… I do hope this help.. ~

To keep healthy, everyone should do more exercise, especially children. According to the professionals, toddlers need at least one hour of exercise everyday. Kids have lots of energy and they are doing exercise all the time by themselves without thinking of it… running around the living room, kicking ball, walking up and down the staircase, cycling, etc. However, as parent we should not just encouraging the children to do more exercise, but also have to involve with them, provide and assist them in more energetic physical activities. 

Let us see what are the benefits for children to do exercise:

• Exercise make our Heart Happy

Our heart is muscle and when we are doing exercise in a regular basis, it will help this muscle to get stronger and perform better in pumping blood and deliver oxygen to all parts of our body.

• Exercise Strengthen our Muscle

It will help our muscles to grow stronger and bigger too

• Exercise Make us Flexible

Most children able to move their body in flexible, bending and stretching their body without any trouble or feeling any tightness or pain. Will you able to bend your body and touch your nose with your knee? I remember I can do it years ago and was really fun after stretched my back… well, yeah… admitted… it was many years ago, when I was still a kid and it will be suffering to ask me to do it again now.. I should have do more exercise ~_~

• Exercise Keeps the Balance

Do exercise to keep our body fit and keep balance for our calories level. Eating too much (more calories than our body needed) without enough exercise, may have the calories stored as excess fat in our body, which means --- FAT.

• Exercise Make us Feel Good

Exercise will help us in building a strong and flexible body which will enable us to carry out all sort of activities and enjoying our daily life. Furthermore, by doing exercise our brain will release a chemical which called endorphins that will make us feel good and happy

We will have a better sleep if we are physically fit and by then will be able to handle physical and emotional challenges. Since everything going well, we will then be able to enjoy our daily life in a healthy and relaxing mood, so great, isn’t it?

So, how much exercise do a child need for a day?
Children under five that able to walk without assistance
at least 180 minutes (three hours) per day, composing light activity and more energetic physical activity.
Children and young people aged 5 and 18
at least 60 minutes (one hour) per day, composing activities of Moderate Intensity Aerobic Activity and Vigorous Intensive Aerobic Activity. On three days a week, should involve activities of Muscle Strengthening, and Bone Strengthening

What’s mean for these activities?
Light Activity
Such as standing up, moving around, rolling and walking at slow pace

Energetic Physical Activity
Walk in fast pace, riding bike, swimming, dancing, climbing, skipping rope, gymnastics, and active play like hide and seek.

Moderate Intensity Aerobic Activity
These activities are able to raise our heart rate and break a sweat, examples are playing in the playground, skateboarding, rollerblading, riding a bike on level ground or ground with few hills. How we know we are doing at moderate intensity? If you still able to talk but can’t sing words of a song then means you are doing it.

Vigorous Intensive Aerobic Activity
If we are doing at this level, we won’t be able to talk more than a few words without pausing for a breath as we need to breath hard and fast with heart rate going up a bit. Examples of these activities are chasing around, energetic dancing, aerobics, running, gymnastics, playing football, martial arts, riding bike at fast pace or on hilly ground.

Muscle-Strengthening Activity
Activities that will lift our body weight or to work against a resistance. Example activities that suit for a child are swinging on playground equipment bars, gymnastics, climbing tree or rope, sit-ups, sports games like basketball and tennis. For young people, they may involve in other activities such as push-ups, sit-ups, rock climbing, sport games, and resistance exercises like exercise bands, weight machines, or hand-held weights.

Bone-Strengthening Activity
These activities will produce an impact or tension force on the bones that promotes bone growth and strength. Example of activities that suit a child are walking, running, skipping rope, martial arts, jumping, climbing, sport and games like hop scotch. For young people, they can involve in activities such as dance, aerobics, weight training, water based activities and sport games that put force on bones.

We as parent should responsible in building up more structure and balance activities for our children, encourage them to do exercise as habits since they are young… So, I’ll try to put more efforts in doing sports games and exercises with Baby Debo, although it may be challenging….. to me.. hah..

Resources :
NHS Choice, UK’s largest health website
Babble
Kids Health – Kids and exercise
Kids Health – Why exercise is cool

Tot School – Letter D for Duck

Tot School: 22nd ~ 28th April 2013 @ Baby Debo 20 months

Letter of the Week:       Letter D

Object:        Duck

Theme :      Bird

Colour:       Blue

 LETTER BOX


Objects we had in our Letter Box: Dog, Dolphin, Ducks, Deer, Dinosaurs, and Doll
 

Baby Debo took out the objects in the letter box and pass to me while I called out the name of the objects. I put the objects on the whiteboard and wrote the name of the objects on it while repeating the words. She was familiar with Duck and Dog, still pronounce Dog as “GOU” (Chinese word for dog)….


Words learning by spelling out using movable alphabets.

WORKSHEETS

Source: 1plus1plus1equals1 website
Colouring using Crayola Washable Markers.


Source: Letter Maze game from 1plus1plus1equals1 website

Letter Maze game for letter D. Baby Debo did concentrate on marking the letter D….. at the BEGINING, but started scribbling before we reached the bottom end of the maze.


Source: 1plus1plus1equals1 website
Using DIY dot paint for chopping letter D. Baby Debo doing really well… I like her works …….^_^

MUSIC
I printed out these musical notes from softcopy slides given free when I bought the set of Flash Cards from China online. I had adding in Chinese and English name of the notes at the back, laminated to make it as flash cards. I flashed in two languages, both Chinese and English in separate day to avoid confusion. Before this, I had showed her music note songs from youtube, so at least she had some little idea what these black signs are…

SHAPES

Source: 3dinosaurs

Printed out the shapes cards and adding Chinese name on it. I found some of the shape objects from her toys and DIY cutting from foam papers for those I can’t find any objects match with the shapes (trapezoid, diamond, oval, crescent). Seems so colourful.. I do like it, so do Baby Debo. She matched the shapes correctly and likes to play with the objects, especially ring shape… she likes to put the rings on her little fingers… Girls do like rings and diamong ! !@_@

She able to call out “Star", but for crescent she keep calling it as “Moon”…. well, not wrong, right?

 

I had been crazy in buying wrapping papers with special themes and this was one of it. As this week theme was BIRDS, I put this wrapping paper on a cardboard, wrapping it with transparent wrapper. I put this “Picture” in front of Baby Debo study table as decoration, inspired her interests and imagination on birds.

Before started the activity, I had gone through the of <Birds> with Baby Debo, where it introduce some type of birds we normally can find around us, to give her some ideas of BIRDS.
 

I bought this bird sticker from Popular Bookstore with a “not-cheap” price.. RM 9.90… where for me was consider as NOT CHEAP for just stickers, but this birds series stickers are quite good in quality and had label the birds ….in Japanese. Since the price was NOT CHEAP, so I decided to use it “WISELY” instead of just letting Baby Debo to simply stick on somewhere. 




I had made a list of name of the birds with pictures in three languages: JAPANESE, ENGLISH and CHINESE. I didn’t concentrate in teaching Baby Debo the Japanese  (I am interested in learning Japanese… so this worksheets are for me as well.. ^_^ ) …. I teach Baby Debo in both language, both Chinese and English, showing her the stickers and asked her to stick it at the correct column (matched with the picture). She liked the stickers very much and able to name the OWL and DUCK…. others BIRDS ..@_@  …. but she was able to identify some birds when I called out the name: Eagle, Chicken, and Penguin. This was a good way for some introduction on types of birds for Baby Debo.

RIGHT BRAIN EXERCISE

Seems long time not playing this photographic memory game, and more practice were needed as Baby Debo had FORGOTTEN how to play !!!!!!

 

Sorting objects in different colours. I bought these three little basket from Giant supermarket with offered price. Colour sorting was not a big problem for Baby Debo. ^_^

PHYSICAL PRACTICE


Alphabets Puzzle. Previously Baby Debo only know how to pull out the alphabets but now she started putting back the alphabets on the correct place, with some guidance…big  surprise for me ^_^ … Good job !!

 

Lacing turtle bought from Boulevard Shopping Mall. There were four different colours turtles in a box and I had picked two out but actually just using one for playing. This seems a bit hard for Baby Debo because the holes were deep and her little fingers still unable to control it very well… just a try… keep it for later use.

COLOURING


Kumon Let’s Color again..!!… Love this book.. so we doing some “cooking” this week, “Bring On The Pasta”..still scribbling, but had some improvement, at least most of the “spaghetti” was draw on the plate~

ART WORK 

Idea from Totally Tot, Capital D for Dinosaur and small d for Daisy. Baby Debo helping me to glue and paste all the parts together.

HANDCRAFT


Baby Debo know what she need to do when seeing this… press and pushed out the parts… just hope she can do it in little bit more gentle.. We put the parts together and here it was… D for DOG !

 
Here are the four letters we had done from A to D …nice decoration, right?

BOOKS
 These were some of the books we had for this week.
Borrow from Library:
Focus on BIRDS,
Animal Life Cycle Series – Duck
鸟类(type of birds)
勇敢的小狗(story book about a brave dog)

SIGHTSEEING
Coincidently we had the chance to visit Taman Tumbina (Zoolgical and Botanical Garden) in Bintulu a week before we started the letter D week. Some special kind of birds can be found in this park, and this was my first time seeing Hornbill… they are very beautiful and big !! I was wondering how hard is the horn on their head…(~_~).

I was excited seeing so many special animals there.. so do Baby Debo!! She was crazy seeing animals… pointing here and there, talking her own language.. Happy to see her enjoying the trip.

        Hornbill                                                            Peacock

                Flamingo                                                          Owl
 
               Eagle                                                       White Crested Hornbill

Sensory Bin – Birds

Another interesting sensory bin --- Birds for Letter D for Duck. I divided it into two parts, grass and sand with pond. Duck is under bird category, but not all birds can fly and swim. So, I purposely separated the swam and ducks (which can swim) from chickens and bird.



What I can find for the sensory bin was: two chickens, bird, swam and ducks. I used the fake grass as the base for the chickens and brown mahjong paper as sand. I used blue foam paper as the pond and made some lotus leafs on top of it. Other materials like trees, rocks, wood, etc were from the Farm toys set.





Two ducky swimming in the pond, and little swam would like to join them too… ^_^


I tried to let Baby Debo understand not all birds can swim, but she still insisted to put everything including tchicken and rocks on the pond…. stubborn !!!! I guess she like swimming ~_~

Lapbook for Letter A

Resource: MrPrintable.com (Capital A printable)

I made lapbook mainly to let Baby Debo to do some revision on what we had learned and for proper file keeping the printable materials. I printed Capital A letter and made the small a letter myself by using unused colour paper for tot book cover.



Here is the inside of the lapbook…What we have here:
Right column: ABC Exercise, A’s clipart for linking memory game, Apple 123
Middle Part: Life Cycle of an Apple, apple Songs and note of theme and date of the activities.
Left Column: ABC Bible and verse (Psalm 17:8)


At the back of the lapbook was Baby Debo’s first “art creation” …^_^

Here is our very first lapbook for Letter A … to know what activities we had for the week:
SENSORY BIN – A for APPLE
Letter A for Apple Week
Tot School – Letter A (Overview)

Special Theme Week – The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I made a caterpillar wall collage for decoration and words learning for Baby Debo. You can find the way I made this collage here in my blog. I will keep and use these alphabets later for other theme and in my alphabets box.



Main material we need – Book of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, with her caterpillar toy. We read and go through the story book together on the first day of the theme.



On the second day, I read the story again but this time I was using some cards which I downloaded from here, to illustrate the story. I also made a sun and moon by using foam paper to illustrate morning and night..she likes it, especially the moon… I can’t find the moon after the activity, I guess she had kept in somewhere for herself @_@ I also used the fruits cards to teach her quantity …but she tend to eat the cards rather than counting it (she bite the orange cards) ….






We had mini Chinese colours flash cards matching with the colour sticks plus colourful poms poms too. I had prepared a clip for her to clip the pom pom out from the box, but she insisted to use her hand to do it. She can do it pretty well in sorting pom poms into the box.

 

After colour matching, I had stick the card on the IKEA white board together with the colourful sticks by using TACK IT, for Baby Debo to do some revision. I think I will just stick it here for some period, so we can use these colours cards for our weekly theme.


Resource: 1plus1plus1equals1 website 

Nomenclature cards of the main objects in the story. I stick the cards on the white board after showing her few times and playing cards matching. She able to recognize few pictures: orange, apple, butterfly, ice-cream cone (her favourite), pear, sausage, and leaf..she can’t recognize the caterpillar picture but pointed the caterpillar collage on the wall when I called and showed her the words “caterpillar”….


Resource: 1plus1plus1equals1 website 

I paste these puzzle pieces on a colour paper and Baby Debo in charged of gluing it before passing to me. I explained the life cycle of a caterpillar to a butterfly, as what happened to the caterpillar in the story book. This is an interesting and useful material, thanks to the 1plus1plus1equals1 .

 

Our first try of DIY dot paint on Caterpillar worksheet. Baby Debo did pretty well, and able to chop on the circle by her own. Dot paint works enable the children to practice fine motor skills, one to one correspondence skills, hand-eye coordination skills, and identify the way of writing the alphabets letters. 
Resource: Confessionsofahomeschooler
Her final work of dot paint… no bad ya, she was quite enjoying playing with the dot paint

Resource: 1plus1plus1equals1 website 

Dice game of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I gave her a smiling face stickers to stick on the graphing paper after she threw the dice. She did like this game initially but ran away before we reached the number five.

PHYSICAL PRACTISE

Resource: Confessionsofahomeschooler website

Lacing a colourful letter C caterpillar. I printed out, pasted it on a cardboard, cut it out and punched hole on each circle. I also made a thread,using an unused ribbon from a gift box. She loved this game especially the ribbon, walking around with the ribbon on her neck.. ^_^



Open and Close basket, to develop Baby Deb’s fine motor skills. I tried to get different size of containers and bags with different way to open: pulling out, twisting, zip, pulling thread, and button.

COLOURING


Thought of giving her a try on Mandala colouring, the simplest two colours worksheet…. How was she doing? Well, as seen as the drawing beside… She still not yet ready for the Mandala, will let her do it again after she know how to ‘COLOURING”. Since then, I will let her practise the way of using crayon before doing the Mandala again, using the Kumon colouring book.


I really like the Kumon books, especially this colouring book. It teach children colouring step by step, started with scribbling. I just can’t wait to let Baby Debo to use this book, and here is it… her first lesson…Breakfast Time !! She was just SCRIBBLING all over but a good try for her.

SONG
These
two books were gifts from my sister-in-law, comes with CDs. We played some Letter Cs and caterpillar songs from Youtube, and also these two new CDs…very lovely songs.

From Youtube: Hungry Songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-gNaNOWdg8