Building Your Kid's Best Day with ParticipACTION

Building Your Kid’s Best Day with ParticipACTION

January 19, 2018

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of ParticipACTION . All opinions are 100% mine.

I’m going to keep this post nice and short. Mainly so that you’ve got less reason to stay sitting and more to get up.

This year, I’m making a conscious effort to move more, eat a little less sugar, put away my phone and make sleep a priority. Easier said than done, right? Well no, not if it’s truly important to you, and it should be.

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According to the clever people who developed the new 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth, there are 4-speeds for children ages 5 – 17: Sweat, Step, Sit, and Sleep.

SWEAT – Your child’s best day wouldn’t be complete without at least 60 minutes of heart-pumping physical activity each day.
STEP – You can’t have a best day without several hours of light physical activity, especially outdoors.
SIT – Try not to spend more than 2 hours a day on a screen or sitting for long periods. Get out and be active!
SLEEP – End your day with a night of uninterrupted sleep.
- AGES 5-13: 9-11 HRS
- AGES 14-17: 8-10 HRS

Get more info here: 24-Hour Movement Guidelines

While my daughter is a few years shy of that age-range, she is actively encouraged to run around, play with toys that require her to chase, ride, bounce or run. We know when she has had a good run around that she’ll sleep well, which gives Mummy and Daddy time to unwind until it’s go-time again in the morning.

Building our best day is easy. Just get the building blocks right and the rest should follow.

Get Up & Out

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A visit to the city farm to chase after the ducks (or run from them!)

We try and limit TV to one or two short shows while we pack the bags to go out. Then it’s time to get up and stay up. We run, jump in puddles, or when we get a chance, head up to the local mountains to play in the snow. In the summer, there’s always one of the local beaches. We really are spoiled here in Vancouver.

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Time to run!

Get Down

Nap times and bedtimes are super important. As well as giving parents the chance to relax, young people’s brains and bodies are growing and learning at an incredible rate.

According to a new report by Statistics Canada, only 36% of kids aged 5 to 17 years get the 60 minutes of heart-pumping physical activity they need each day. Only 49% met the screen time recommendations of 2 hours of recreational screen-time per day.

In recent decades, children’s nightly sleep duration has decreased by about 30 to 60 minutes. Also, every hour kids spend in sedentary activities delays their bedtime by 3 minutes. And the average 5- to 17-year-old Canadian spends 8.5 hours being sedentary each day.