These days, it’s extremely common for families to spend less time outside. This is even more true thanks to global lockdowns and stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, we seem to be on the tail end of this situation and it means we can start going outside and spending time outdoors with our family. However, for families that have grown used to staying indoors, this can be rather tricky.
There are also situations where families don’t spend much time outdoors together due to other commitments. For example, if you simply don’t have much time outside of weekends to actually have fun with your kids, then you need to find other ways for your family to adopt healthier habits.
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Introduce more active games for your family to play at home
There are actually a surprising number of games that your family can play at home which lead to more active lifestyles. A great example of this is any kind of game that can be played in the garden. The obvious choices are to set up something like a basketball net or even a badminton net, but you can also use video games that are great for keeping your kids active during lockdown. There are lots of games on Nintendo consoles that promote the use of moving your body around, and there are dancing games that combine fun and exercise into a single fun package.
Encourage your family to do more chores around the house
Chores can be a great way to introduce a bit of activity into each family member’s day. It’s a low-impact form of exercise and comes with the added bonus of keeping your home clean and tidy. Anything from watering the plants to dusting shelves or even taking out the trash can add a bit of much-needed activity into our days. This also helps to develop habits that encourage your family to keep the home clean and to tidy up after themselves. This can take a while to get started because children are usually very resistant to tidying up after themselves. As such, it’s a good idea to try and encourage them to do more chores when they’re still young so they can build up those good habits.
Try family exercise sessions as a part of your daily routine
The key to keeping fit as a family is encouraging everyone in the family to follow the same kind of routine. A great example of this is doing some morning stretches together before breakfast or any other time during the day where the whole family is in the same room. Making this a habit is a great way to instill healthy habits into your family, but you can expect it to go out of style once your children grow up a little and prefer to do their own fitness routines or if they’re busy and need to get to work or school. But until then, it’s good to try and encourage them to add more fitness into their daily routine.
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Note: This is a collaborative article. Updated 2026.
