PARENTING TIPS
PREGNANCY
BABY CARE
TODDLERS
TEENS
HEALTH CARE
ACTIVITIES & CRAFTS
Did you know it takes between 21 and 66 days to make something a habit? That’s really not that long! I know there are many habits I would like to adopt into my life – more exercise, healthier eating, deeper Bible study. There are also many habits I would like for my children to pick up – chores, physical activity, hygiene, kind gestures. This is where American Coaching Academy comes in! I received their Healthy Habit Trackers to use with my children for the past month or so.
The monthly challenges are all different! Here are the different challenge topics:
- Muscular Endurance (wall sit, run in place, high plank, crab bridge, wall pushups)
- Household Chores (take care of pet, wash dishes, take out trash, make bed, clean floor, set table)
- Healthy Body (drink water, play outside, brush your teeth twice, stretch, wash hands before eating, sleeping for 9+ hours)
- Kindness (give someone a compliment, reach out to a friend, give a hug, tidy your room, tell someone you love them, hold the door for someone)
- Nutrition (drink water, each fruit, vegetables, lean protein, and grains)
- Locomotor Movements (bear crawl, crab walk, side shuffle, tiptoe, army crawl, hopscotch)
- Boot Camp (burpees, pushups, squat jumps, sidekicks, sit-ups, high plank)
- Yoga Flow (different yoga poses)
- Cardio Endurance (jumping jacks, running in place, jumping and reaching, freestyle dance, hop in place)
- Flexibility (quad stretch, touch toes, hamstring stretch, V stretch, neck stretch, butterfly stretch)
- Muscular Strength (pushups, squats, sit-ups, walking lunges, crab pushups)
- Bee Healthy (drink water, freestyle dance, give a compliment, stretch, crab bridge)
We also received 12 blank trackers that I can fill in with my own activities! I have been thinking of the different things I could add to the trackers – Bible memorization, reading, math facts, and more.
I printed off all 12 of the challenge sheets and let my boys each choose which challenge they wanted to complete for the month of June. Here are what they chose and how they used each tracking sheet:
Silas, age 12: He chose the Household Chores tracking sheet. He figured he already had to do some of these chores anyway so he might as well kill two birds with one stone! The only one we changed a bit was setting the table – we don’t set our table since we eat buffet style from the kitchen counter. Instead, I told him to count that as clearing the table after we finish eating each evening. He didn’t miss many days of this challenge, and I didn’t have to remind him very often. I started writing it down in their Summer Daily Notebooks as part of their checklist.
His daily checklist was:
1.) Take care of your pet
2.) Wash the dishes
3.) Take out the trash
4.) Make the bed
5.) Clean the floor
6.) Set the table (we changed it to clear the table)
Titus, age 9: He chose the Muscular Endurance tracker. He had to do each activity listed for one minute, so it took him literally five minutes a day. I think he enjoyed the challenges! He’s already pretty active and takes Taekwondo twice a week, but I told him the muscular endurance activities would be definitely help his Taekwondo performance.
wall sit
His daily checklist was:
1.) 1 minute wall sit
2.) 1 minute run in place
3.) 1 minute high plank
4.) 1 minute crab bridge
5.) 1 minute wall pushups
What did we think?
I was pretty impressed with this product. It’s such a simple concept, but it works so well! My kids enjoyed taking ownership of their tracking sheets. Seeing each spot get colored in and the pictures fill up was a great motivator. Since each tracking sheet had a different graphic, it was fun to pick the different challenges. It makes it seem different each time, instead of the same pictures to color in.
The challenges took less than 10 minutes each day (and most of them around 5 minutes). This is a great idea for homeschoolers, too. The fitness challenges could be a great warm-up for PE, before sports practice, or in between school subjects to get the wiggles out! It would also be a great incentive for screen time, if you allow that for your children. Make it a requirement to complete the daily challenges before their allotted screen time.
