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Fun kid-friendly exercises for healthy hearts

Celebrate American Heart Month with these heart-healthy and kid-friendly activities!

With February being American Heart Month, we spend plenty of time talking about heart health for adults, but it is equally important to talk about healthy habits for kids, too.

As parents, the goal is to make sure your kids are staying healthy, and one of the first steps towards reaching that goal is to model good behavior. Although, it might be the hardest, and quite possibly your least favorite step.

Emily Carter from the Seattle Children’s Athletic Trainers Program says healthy kids make healthy adults and teaching kids simple ways to prioritize activity can go a long way. There are plenty of ways to stay active, even when it is cold and dreary outside by making heart-healthy activities in your home.

“Just bringing them inside and letting their creativity take center stage, so allowing them to create obstacle courses,” said Carter.

Courses like the one 8-year-old Xavier Austin-Bell created for New Day NW can be made using items found around the house, such as pillows, blankets, and chairs.

“Just be creative and find different uses for it,” said Carter.

Often, high interval training is thought as only being a method used at the gym, but Carter says you can easily turn this into a game for kids by letting them set the timer and pick the music to go along with it. Both can be easily done on a phone.

“Adding music can make things fun, and that’s what exercise needs to be,” said Carter. “As a kid, fun is a big part of an activity and will make them life-long active humans.”

Another idea for keeping kids active: fitness stations around the house.

“You can even create an activity spinner with different activities and have stations around,” said Carter. “Have them counting out push-ups and sit-ups and you do it along with them, just makes it a different variety of exercise and makes them think about a different way of staying healthy.”

Xavier looks at physical activity as play and says that adults need to learn to play more.

“[Activity] is a great way to have parents connect with their kids,” said Carter. “Allowing the kids to take charge and say what the game is going to be is a good way for them to kind of role-reverse.”

And Carter says it’s all about keeping it fun. So throw out the structure and allow kids to use their creativity to make their own rules.

Kids should get about 60 minutes of activity a day to maintain a healthy weight and decrease the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other health conditions.

Find out more about indoor active play on Seattle Children's blog On the Pulse.

Watch New Day Northwest 11:00 weekdays on KING-TV Ch.5 or streaming live on KING5.com. Connect with New Day via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

This segment brought to you by Seattle Children's.

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