What a week! Ok so I hate to write back to back exercise-related posts, but this is more along the lines of games, gifts, and holiday season sanity maintenance.
As the holidays draw closer, a lot of families are planning festivities to celebrate with friends and family. Dinners, parties, and lots of hosting events, traveling to events, or both are likely in YOUR future. Extended holiday family time can be taxing as it is, and it's a whole different animal when children are thrown into the mix.
I can think back to my childhood, when Thanksgiving at my grandmother's consisted of 2 hours of driving in the minivan, followed by lots of hello kisses and hugs, the newest Barbie or fad present I rattled on about during my last visit to Nana and Pop-Pop's house, meatballs, gravies of all kinds, turkey, and then............. ADULTS TALKING..........
It seemed to me that the coffee-and-catching-up portion of the evening lasted
SO MUCH LONGER than everything else. This could be partially due to the fact that the time was typically spent inventing games that would usually end up with someone hurt, something broken, someone(s) being punished, and everyone crying, but I think the underlying reason was this: BOREDOM.
Nana and Pop-Pop's house had great stuff - like pretty china and silver tea pots, Nana's size 5 high heels that were closer to my size than any real shoe I'd ever seen (dress-up tea party anyone?), and a little black poodle named Lola who was ready-though-not-as-willing-as-we-regularly-assumed to entertain us. But all stuff this was off-limits, so while the grown-ups got their fill of napping, laughing, gossiping and carrying on, the kids were left twiddling our thumbs, flipping channels.
I only wish we'd had something to occupy our time in a POSITIVE way. There are tons of travel games and things to bring to occupy the kids, but one that I would recommend trying out would be the Smart Fit by Fisher Price
. With only one piece to worry about, you won't lose parts to THIS one in your travels! The Fisher Price Smart Fit is a game much like the Wii Fit
for Nintendo, minus the game console, controllers, and adult-supervision-required handling of the equipment. The Smart Fit Park is an interactive learning device designed to plug into any television to provide entertainment, education, AND exercise to children ages 2-6. This is truly a plug and play device, as the software is in the mat. The Park features 8 modes of acitivities for youngsters, including different subjects, like spelling, shapes and music, and allows children to see the effects of their movements as their characters walk, run, jump and stomp in response to the player's actions. It's never too early to sharpen motor skills and start building muscle memory, and this is a no-guilt way to let the kids burn off some post-turkey energy while the adults reconnect (and, if the men in your family are anything like MY power nappers, recharge)!
There are games like it, like the Fisher Price 3-in-1 Smart Sports Plug In
, which boasts games like baseball, tennis and golf through 9 interactive levels, but the Smart Fit Park is a convenient under $50 tool to not only give kids an activity, but boost their skills at the same time. Read more about the Smart Fit here .
Reviews on Amazon
rate the product pretty well (see for yourself here), and I think it's definitely worth a shot.Hey, maybe if Nana had had this, there wouldn't have been so much glitter in her shoes come Black Friday morning.
Now I want to know - how do YOUR family functions usually go around the holidays?
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