It’s already April, but that’s not too late to make a 2011 resolution! Trade in your family’s lazy habits for healthier ones by encouraging each member of your household to spend more time as a unit, rather than as individuals. Family members can feel neglected if everyone spends too much time doing their own thing–surfing the web, watching TV, playing video games, or other sedentary individual activities. Below are some ideas to implement with your family for a happier, healthier house!
- Instead of going on the internet, read a book! Whether you start a family reading time where each person reads his or her own book while enjoying some sunshine in the yard, or you read a family favorite aloud with a delicious fruit smoothie in hand, reading books as a family can be fun and definitely sharpens your kids’ reading skills.
- When you see your kids playing video games, switch the TV off and encourage them to pick up a real soccer ball and kick it around in the yard. The physical activity will do a lot more for them than moving around a tiny joystick will!
- Don’t let the television be a remedy for boredom. Attempt to engage your kids (and the whole family!) in a board game or other fun activity like charades or sardines. You can even make up your own game!
Another way to encourage healthy habits in your family is to have a family-only night once a week. With all the after-school activities kids pick up over the years, it can be hard to fit in a time when your entire family can just hang out and not be distracted by friends, sports, TV, or even homework. Dedicating a certain night of the week to family bonding can be fun and facilitate close relationships between all members of your clan.
- Produce a family skit. Nothing beats an in-home theater, especially when the actors are your children! If you’re not blessed with a talent for acting, you can set up a stage for the local stuffed animal population–those guys are never ashamed to act in front of others!
- Using couches, cushions, chairs, sheets, pool noodles, or whatever, create an obstacle course or fort. Clean-up can be horrendous, but it’s worth it almost every time to see the looks of achievement on your kids’ faces after they complete a marathon of dodging skyscrapers of couch cushions and hopping over piles of books.
- If you’ve got any artistic bones in your body, work together to make a scrapbook of an event that everyone attended or your last family vacation. Assign each person to a stack of photos, then cut and glue away! Combine everyone’s pages at the end to get a lovely keepsake to look at in the future.
Visit www.getbacktothetable.com or http://www.facebook.com/LibbysTable for more information on how to form healthy family habits! And don’t forget to check out Libby’s Jingle Contest. Recreate the iconic Libby’s jingle for a chance to win $10,000!
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