Ok, so this spring has totally sucked so far. You may be asking, "what spring"? Today is April 14th. Yesterday, in mid-Michigan it snowed on and off all afternoon and two days ago northern mid-Michigan had a snow day closing schools because of icy conditions. Many of my friends have posted snow covered cars, snow covered lawns, and photos of the weather report showing all kinds of wintry weather in April.
It is certainly tough to get outdoors ourselves let alone get the kids out of the house, but we have to stay strong, be committed, and get them outside.
I am currently taking an online course on gamification. It is fascinating! You should check out the free courses available on www.coursera.org . That's where I found this one. The first lesson spoke of games and gamers and provided highlights and statistics. Just one game system listed (my son's favorite) gets over 100,000,000 minutes of active play every month. Now, I don't believe that games are bad, stir up bad behavior and violence and stuff like that, but I do believe that they can lead to our children packing on a few pounds.
That's the main reason I made a commitment to get my family out and about at least once per month to run a 5k together. Today is month 2 Thompson family 5k's and we will be heading shortly to East Lansing to run in the Race for the Place. For the record, we didn't drag the kids out in January and February when race day temps were around 3 degrees with windchill well below zero. I know that it doesn't sound like much, but it's a good start. My hope is that it will create healthy habits and memories that last a lifetime.
Running may not be your thing, but there are still plenty of things you can do to get those kids outside and ensure that No Child Is Left Inside (even in the cold brrrrr).
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