10 activities to include in a healthy daily routine for kids
What to include in a healthy daily routine for kids
Are you wondering what to include in a healthy daily routine for children? Here are ten suggestions for parenting to incorporate into your children’s morning schedule or after-school routine.
How Important Is Routine For Children?
It you’re a parent, you might be wondering about what to include in a healthy daily routine for children. But how important is routine for children?
We are not hugely routine-driven people, choosing to have a more baby-led approach (for example, breastfeeding on demand and using baby-led weaning). When your children are older though, having a daily routine, however loosely structured, will give the day a format to follow, and incorporating healthy habits into this will hopefully mean they become second nature.
This is especially true when they start school.
While some of thing might be natural to you and things you’re doing already, other things for a healthy daily routine might need more of an introduction.
Here are ten things to include in a healthy daily routine for children.
- Hand washing: Hand washing is a simple habit it’s easy to start as soon as children start to become more independent. Make sure you always wash your own hands! Tell them why it’s important and reinforce the idea with family rules, such as no-one sits down to eat without having washed their own hands.
- Washing and bath times: Some parents like to give their children a daily bath, others may prefer to do it every few days or once a week. Whatever your view, pick a routine and stick to it. Children love being in water and it’s easy to make bath time fun, with their favourite gentle bath or shower wash and all the toys you can fit in the bath.
- Teeth brushing: Is teeth brushing a source of stress in your household? Try and figure out why – it could be anything from the toothpaste flavour being too strong, them preferring to do it themselves or not wanting to interrupt play. There are apps you can download that make it into the game, and different toothbrushes or learning to do it themselves may help. Either way, add twice daily toothbrushing into your routine.
- Drinking lots of water: Keep your children’s water bottles filled up and encourage them to stay hydrated and drink throughout the day, not just at snack and mealtimes. Make sure you drink lots of water too (it’s easy to forget and end up with a headache!).
- Eating a healthy, balanced diet: It’s important to encourage children to eat a healthy, balanced diet, with plenty of water. You can challenge them to ‘eat a rainbow’ of fruit and vegetables to make it fun.
- Make sure you add in healthy snacks too
- Exercise: While young children may not have a structured exercise routine yet, it’s good to encourage them to be as active as possible and show that moving can be fun. Try to spend as much time as possible outside in the fresh air every day. Try simple tricks like walking instead of taking the car, or just run around in the garden.
- Talking about their feelings: Mental health is incredibly important too, so encourage your children to talk to you about their feelings, both good and bad. Having an open dialogue means they will come to you with any issues when they are older.
- Downtime: Screen-free time is important, as is time spent relaxing and away from anything overstimulating that may make them stressed or disrupt their sleep routine.
- Sleep: The final entry on our list of ten things to include in a healthy daily routine for children? Sleep. A healthy sleep routine is important, with naps and the appropriate bedtime for their age. The NHS has a guide to infant sleep and advice on dealing with common sleep problems.
Make sure you also read:
- Healthy meal ideas for fussy eater kids
- How to teach healthy habits for kids, for life
- What CBeebies The Baby Club gets wrong about baby clubs
- 101 indoor activities for kids