Welcome to Happy Healthy Habits! Each Wednesday during October 2011 and November 2011, we’re taking a look at WONDERful topics about health and wellness.
Have you ever wondered…
- What’s your favorite way to exercise?
- Why is exercise important?
- How often should children exercise?
Did you know?
Do you think about your health very often? When you feel good, it’s easy to take your health for granted. But when you get sick, you quickly remember how much you prefer being healthy!
Staying healthy is not always easy. You have to make good decisions every day. Things like eating the right foods and washing your hands regularly are daily choices you make that definitely affect your health.
One of the other important daily choices you have involves exercise. Did you realize that exercise is just as important for staying healthy as eating right and avoiding germs?
It’s true! A well-rounded, healthy life should include regular, daily physical activity. Exercise has many health benefits. It builds strength and helps your bones and muscles work the way they should.
Exercise also helps you maintain a healthy weight. It can even reduce the risk of many health problems, like heart disease.
Exercise benefits your overall health in other ways, too. If you get plenty of exercise each day, you’ll tend to sleep better at night. You’ll also notice that exercising helps to reduce feelings of stress.
Of course, none of this should be news to you. You’ve probably heard about the importance of exercise many times in the past.
Yet, despite how important exercise is, experts agree that most children do not get enough exercise daily. Many children spend too much time watching television, playing video games or engaging in other sedentary (nonactive) activities.
More than one-third of the children in America are overweight. These children face a greater risk of health problems in the future, including heart disease, diabetes, asthma and certain types of cancer.
Studies by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommend that children should be getting at least 30 to 60 minutes of daily exercise. Exactly what type of activity children do to get exercise isn’t as important as making sure that they’re getting exercise on a regular basis.
If you’re like many Americans, exercise is one of those things that’s easy to put off. You can exercise tomorrow, right? Doctors will tell you, though, that — just like eating right — you need to create good exercise habits when you’re young.
The habits you create as a child will usually carry over into your adult life, so get active now and it’ll be easier to keep it up in the future!
Try it out!
So what’s your favorite way to exercise? How do your friends and family like to exercise? Do you ever exercise together as part of a group?
Experts believe that one of the key ways to get kids exercising more is to make it fun. Exercise doesn’t have to be “work,” like running on a treadmill or lifting weights.
There are plenty of ways to be physically active that kids will enjoy and actually look forward to. Here are some tips you can use to get more physically active on a daily basis:
- Take your dog for a walk, or go for a walk together as a family. Exercising with loved ones is a great way to spend quality time together and get healthier in the process.
- Do chores that involve physical activity, such as mowing the lawn or raking leaves.
- Plan fun family activities that involve exercise, like hiking, swimming or bowling.
- Walk or ride your bike wherever you can. Why wait for a ride in the car when you can get there faster using your own feet or your bicycle?
- Play sports! Whether it’s soccer, tennis, football, basketball, wrestling, volleyball or swimming, team sports give you a chance to get plenty of exercise. Plus, it’s fun because you get to spend time with your friends.
So what is your favorite way to exercise? Email or Tweet us to let us know.
Feel free to take a photograph of your favorite way to exercise, or draw a picture that shows how you like to exercise. You can also post your picture on Facebook. We can’t wait to read about and see your ideas!
If you want some more great ideas for ways to exercise, find out 50 ways for kids to exercise indoors or out!
Wonder words to know and use:
- granted
- physical
- activity
- exercise
- benefit
- sedentary
- diabetes
- asthma
- components
- habit
Still wondering?
Check out Illuminations’ Every Beat of Your Heart lesson to learn how to collect, organize and interpret data involving the heart rate at rest and after exercise.
Wonder what’s next?
Tomorrow’s all-new Wonder of the Day promises to be one of the most INTERESTing Wonders ever!
(5 votes, average: 3.60 out of 5) 
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Our favorite exercise is riding our bikes because we get exercise in our legs from peddling and our arms from steering. We think exercise helps us stay happy, healthy, and strong.
Riding bikes is a GREAT way to exercise, East Jarvis Second Grade! Your body gets a work out AND your eyes do, too! You get to SEE all the cool things in the world as you pedal by! Thank you for visiting today’s Happy Healthy Habits Wonder of the Day®!
We love to be active! Some of the exercises we like are swimming, push-ups, sit-ups, sports, and golf. But we like our video games too. We can combine video games with exercise by playing the Wii!
We know other Wonder Friends who enjoy ACTIVE games on the Wii, Mrs. Morales’ second graders! There are so many different sports to participate in on the Wii, like dancing, yoga, running and kickboxing! Video game exercising can help keep us physically fit when the weather is bad outside (we just have to make sure we stay ACTIVE while we enjoy the games)! We like getting OUTSIDE for exercise the best, though, and REALLY enjoy participating in the same exercises you guys do!
For some reason the video won’t work and I really want to watch it. Please reply if you know how to fix it.
Hi, Cole! If you are visiting Wonderopolis at school, your school or school district might have a special video-blocking filter in place that keeps you from playing the video. The blocker is a way to help keep students from visiting bad websites or seeing videos on other websites that might not be good for them to see. Unfortunately, it keeps students from seeing the Wonderopolis videos, too. You might want to check with your teacher or computer lab adult to see if your school has the video filter in place.
I like to do sit-ups.
We think sit-ups are a WONDERful way to exercise, Cole! Your comment has inspired us to go do some sit-ups right now!
We love to exercise. We just did a couple of our favorite exercises like push ups and jogging in place.
Thanks Wonderopolis!
Thank you for your SUPER DUPER comment today, Mr. Fines! We are proud of you and your students for exercising today! We know you exercise your minds in kindergarten every day, but exercising your bodies is important, too! Way to go!
I love this site, it is very fun to go to. =-)
We think it’s AWESOME that you like visiting Wonderopolis, Camogirl! Thank you for letting us know that! We hope you visit us again very soon!
Dear Wonderopolis,
Our class can’t wait to go home and exercise today! Our homework tonight is going to be interviewing our families to see what is their favorite kind of exercise. We are going to make a graph. (Mrs. Johnson says, “Thank you for the homework idea!”) We will let you know the results of our poll tomorrow.
We are also trying to think of ways to make our school better. We are thinking of forming an exercise club.
Now we have another question from Ziad. Today we skyped with Mrs. Johnson’s daughter who lives in California (we live in Ohio) about how the pumpkin carving movie was made. You had it on your jack-o-lantern wonder last week. Molly told us about stop motion video. Ziad is wondering how Skype works that we could see Molly and talk to her from Ohio.
That’s all for now!
Mrs. Johnson’s third grade class
WOW! What a GREAT comment, Mrs. Johnson’s third grade! We can’t wait to hear about the results of your exercise poll! We WONDER what everyone’s favorite way to exercise will be? We also think an exercise club would be an AMAZING thing! We are super proud of you all for thinking of ways to make your school better and for inspiring other students and teachers to exercise with you!
You have given us some really good ideas for future Wonders of the Day…thank you! We really like Ziad’s question about Skype, as well as learning more about stop-motion photography! You guys are AWESOME!
What is your favorite way to pump those muscles? I like to do jumping jacks.
We like to do jumping jacks, too, Tucker! They are an AWESOME way to exercise your heart and lungs, as well as your muscles! We like all kinds of exercise…anything that helps make our bodies stronger and healthier!
My favorite way to exercise is to go outside and play soccer with friends.
Playing soccer is a great work out, gogeta9000! It’s lots of fun to exercise with family and friends!
Our class goes for a walk every day. We also like to run and do jumping jacks. We thought it was interesting that exercise can help you sleep better.
Thanks for sharing all the awesome ways your class exercises together, Mrs. Glasgow’s class! We think it is GREAT that you go for a walk every day!
My favorite exercise is gymnastics. I think that is a great way to exercise. That is how I exercise.
We think gymnastics is a great way to exercise, too, Freyja! Thank you for commenting on today’s Wonder of the Day®! We bet you are an AMAZING gymnast!
I really love your website, it’s the best! I love today’s wonder because my favorite exercise is sit-ups.
My class goes on the website every day. I love it SO much!
Thanks for letting us know that your class visits Wonderopolis every day, GEM! That makes us VERY happy! We hope you learn something new from each Wonder you visit! Keep doing those sit-ups…they are GREAT exercise!
I like jumping jacks, too. Have you found out a fear of unicorns yet?!!
Hi, Courtney! Thanks so much for sharing your favorite way to exercise! We haven’t found out what a fear of unicorns is called yet. We do know that a fear of horses is called equinophobia or hipophobia, but we don’t know if there is a word for the fear of horns or fear of horned animals to combine those words with to make a new word that means the fear of unicorns. We’ll keep WONDERing about this if you will, too, OK?
My favorite way to exercise is to do gymnastics, because you’re always running around and maybe bouncing on a trampoline.
P.S.: I LOVE WONDEROPOLIS!!
Hi there, Abigail! We think doing gymnastics is AWESOME! It’s definitely a GREAT way to exercise. Thanks for your comment (and for loving Wonderopolis)!
Will you have any Christmas Wonders?
Keep visiting Wonderopolis during the holidays to learn about MANY different types of traditions and celebrations, Ayden! It’s going to be GREAT!
Hi! I love Wonderopolis!! It’s an awesome site! I am in east jarvis second grade!!! My fave exercise is to walk my dog in nice weather. His name is Jack. Hes a great boy!! I love him very much!! He’s my Buddy Bubba Boy.
Thanks,
Wonderopolis
We can tell you love Jack very much, Julia! He’s a very lucky dog to have such a caring owner like you! Walking Jack when the weather is nice is an AWESOME way to exercise!
Hi, everybody. I’m in east difonzo kindergarten. I love phila let’s go phila!! Woo, hoo red and black!! Let’s go Quakers, here we go!! My fave exercise is to ride my scooter!! I like my scooter becauseI get to see things in the world. I also like to ride my scooter because I get to grow my muscles by steering my scooter!! I love my scooter because it’s fun!!
Thanks,
Wonderopolis
We bet you are a really good scooter rider, Ava! We really like your comment and your enthusiasm! Way to go!
Actually I really like to eat fruits, veggies and stay active. Although I spend maybe a little to much time on the TV and computer, but since school has started, I find myself doing homework more!!! But I don’t spend all my time on the electronics! I like to roller blade, ride my bike, play tennis, shoot hoops, jump rope, hula hoop, play kick-the-can and more. My favorite fruits are apples, bananas, oranges and more. My favorite veggies are carrots, green beans, peas, and corn. I think it’s very important to get active so you don’t get overweight or get sick. It’s not worth getting sick when you can go on a family bike ride (something I like to do)! How do doctors and scientists figure so many of these things out? I think Wonderopolis is an awesome place to learn and it’s a great resource! I learn so many things when I visit! Every Wonder is so great and I learn from every one!!!!
Your comment makes us VERY happy, Anne! It’s great for us to learn all the awesome ways you like to exercise and the WONDERful fruits and vegetables you like to eat to keep your body strong and healthy! Doctors and scientists study people and health quite a bit. They keep really good notes and perform lots of tests that help them determine the best ways for people to stay healthy!
We learned a lot today! The video was very good and gave us lots of good ideas for how to exercise. We liked the idea of riding a bike to a video game! Some of our favorite exercises are yoga, the funky fish, running, playing outside, riding bicycles, playing sports, dancing, and much more.
We are about to start a daily exercise program in our own classroom that is part of a YMCA curriculum. It will teach us about nutrition and exercise. We are excited to learn about them and keep making connections to the Healthy Wonders! Thanks for another great wonder!!
You will have to share some of the HEALTHY habits you learn from your classroom YMCA curriculum, Kerrick Elementary School! We’re sure our other Wonder Friends would also like to know more about nutrition and exercise! Thank you for teaching us something new again today! We had never heard of the “funky fish” dance! It sure looks like a FUN exercise to do with friends and classmates!
Hi, Wonderopolis!
Hi, Noah! We hope you are having a WONDERful day!
I love sit ups.
Sit-ups are a great way to keep you strong and healthy, hockey2399! Thanks for sharing your favorite exercise today!
This a great website!
Hi, Chelsea! We’re so glad that you stopped by Wonderopolis today! Thanks for letting us know you enjoyed your visit!
What a fun website!!!!!
Hello, Bob! We’re so glad you had fun exploring Wonderopolis today! Thanks for visiting!
Why, I think volleyball is a fun way to exercise!
You’re right, Dynah! Volleyball IS a fun way to exercise! Thank you for sharing your comment with us today!
Yep, you’re welcome!!!!!
I do jogging in Wisconsin.
Jogging is an AWESOME exercise that many people (young and old) enjoy, ASD! Thanks for sharing what your favorite exercise is!