How to keep your kids active during the coronavirus lockdown

/ CMT Learning/
parent meditating child exercising

With so many of us facing new challenges in parenting, home schooling and trying to work from home, we’ve never felt more united with other parents across the world. While some people talk of slowing down, taking up new hobbies or learning a new skill during the coronavirus lockdown, the skill us parents are trying to master is how to entertain our kids at home all day, every day! While we try and keep our kids educated, another challenge of equal proportion is to keep our young people active. Those with sporty kids have not just lost school PE lessons but also all the extra-curricular sports that they’re used to, from school teams to sports clubs, training sessions to matches.

So, how do you keep your children active during the lockdown? Maybe even keep up some of the sports skills they’re used to honing on a regular basis? We got our heads together with our team of Nike Sports Camps staff to bring you ideas, tips and challenges for fun and easy activities using the space you have available…


 

  1. Nike Living Room Cup

    If you have a competitive teenager on your hands, get them involved in the Nike Living Room Cup. Once a week via the integral medium of Instagram, a Nike Athlete sets a challenge asking the audience to video themselves doing as many reps as possible in 45 seconds. Reps of what? The athlete sets a new workout move each week. Kicked off by Cristiano Ronaldo on the 7th April the NikeLivingRoomCup Instagram page features loads of other athletes having a go. Video your child doing the challenge and post on Instagram tagging #nikelivingroomcup to get friends involved. Parents can join the challenge too!


  2. The Body Coach – PE with Joe

    If you haven’t heard about this already you’ve probably been living under a rock, or in a country far far away. Every morning at 9am The Body Coach aka Joe Wicks does a live workout for kids on YouTube. The whole family can get involved (if you have the space!). And if that’s not enough, he also has a series of other kids’ workouts on his YouTube channel. Find it at The Body Coach TV.


  3. Balloon volleyball

    A ball game you can play in your living room without worrying about what’s going to get smashed. All you need is a pack of balloons (or just one) and something to use as a net (it could be the sofa, chairs, a wall of cereal boxes across the floor). Whack the balloon back and forth across the net with your hands. Make some rules – a points system, penalties or forfeits to make it interesting. You can take it outside on a still day but any sign of a breeze and your ball balloon is long gone!


  4. Get creative with equipment to keep your skills up

    If you’re able to get out in a garden and you have some space but don’t have much sports equipment at home - think outside the box. Find an old tennis ball or similar and use a frying pan as a bat/racket for tennis or ping pong, use a rolling pin or cling film roll as a baseball bat. Want to practise your throwing accuracy? Lay out different sized plant pots to throw a ball into at a distance – the smaller they are the harder it is!


  5. Disney Dance-Along

    For those with younger kids there’s the Disney Dance-Alongs offered by the fantastic This Girl Can website, which also has a whole host of recommendations on their Exercising With Your Child page.


  6. Check out our Instagram

    We’re working with our coaches to bring you short, sharp challenges to keep up your tennis/football/hockey skills at home. While we can’t promise high-quality home videoing skills, we can promise the content will be well worth looking at. Check our Instagram regularly for updates.