Spring Health and Wellness Activities for Kids and Families
Looking for some fun activities for your family to try out this Spring? Here I’m sharing my favorite health and wellness activities for kids and families to get you started!
This post is sponsored by Babbleboxx, but all opinions are my own.
Everyone knows that springtime means getting some fun in the sun – when it’s not raining, of course. There’s Easter to celebrate, new flowers to bloom, and (hopefully) the weather’s nice enough for you and your family to get out and enjoy a healthy dose of some vitamin D.
My family loves to start the season of Spring by being healthy together. We try new healthy foods, spend time together under the sun playing games, and practice new activities together. As a mom, I always try to include everyone and take an active role in supporting health and wellness for my kids and family.
This includes making new – yet still fun – activities for my littles.
If you want to support parental engagement within your family and want to encourage health and wellness for your kids, check out my ideas below so you can plan ahead for Spring!
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Fun Health and Wellness Activities for Kids and Families
1. Action for Healthy Kids’ Every Kid Healthy Week
Action for Healthy Kids (AFHK) is a nonprofit organization that supports bringing educators and families together so they can both foster healthier schools and communities that can provide physical and emotional health resources for kids.
AFHK understands that healthy habits start at home and delivers tools, opportunities, and support for underserved communities; after all, everyone deserves to be healthy in body and mind, no matter what their circumstances are or how their home life looks.
Their goal is to help you model healthy behavior with nutrition, physical activity, and emotional wellness. One of their recommendations is to celebrate Every Kid Healthy Week and follow along with the activities they’ve planned for each weekday (click to learn more about each one):
- Mindful Monday – exploring play-based yoga
- Tasty Tuesday – host a family taste test
- Wellness Wednesday – create a family self-care plan
- Thoughtful Thursday – feeling through colors
- Fitness Friday – fun and games with household items
I definitely would encourage signing up to participate here and enjoy the week of fun from April 26-30, but you don’t have to wait until then to do these activities! Feel free to also develop your own activities that are tailored to what your family will enjoy most.
Check out some of our kid-friendly exercise ideas here!
2. Get Outside and Play
You know what’s always going to be important, no matter what? Outside time in the sun!
Breathing in the fresh air, being around nature, and absorbing that vitamin D is always a wonderful idea. It just feels GOOD.
My family has found that it can be easy to get busy and forget to make time to just play together, but we’ve found a way around that. We schedule 30 minutes a day to drop our phones, go outside, and find a fun game to play.
One of our favorite outdoor activities is playing with the Glove-A-Bubbles from Zuru. The glove has holes in it so that when they dip it in bubble soap and wave it in the air, lots of bubbles come flying out. It’s great for developing my preschoolers’ motor skills, and watching them chase all the bubbles is just tons of fun!
I’ve even found a way to get a little arm workout for myself by supplying the littlest Seghetti with an endless stream of bubbles. 😉 Multitasking for the win!
It’s also 100% recyclable through Zuru’s partnership with TerraCycle – which we LOVE – so you don’t have to worry about not being earth-conscious while you’re having fun.
Plus, who doesn’t love bubbles? Who wouldn’t enjoy an easy and speedy way to start some outdoor fun?
If you’re looking for awesome non-candy Easter basket stuffers for your kids, the Glove-A-Bubbles are perfect!
There are lots of ways to get the whole family active in the great outdoors. We love going on a nature walk together, and adding in a scavenger hunt keeps the little kids from getting bored.
We also love having NERF battles outside – the perfect way to get our older children involved in a fun activity that also improves their physical health!
3. Encourage Imaginative Play
Playing pretend with your kids has a LOT of benefits:
- It encourages language development and helps them learn how to better express what they’re trying to say.
- It can help increase social skills while they talk to their imaginary friends or toys.
- It can help develop critical thinking, problem solving behavior, thinking outside of the box, and overall encourages them to use both the practical and imaginative parts of their brain.
- It overall encourages creativity and learning how to use their imagination and think abstractly.
My littles love to play dress up: Aren loves being a pretty princess while Rowen loves his superhero pajamas. They’ll interact with their stuffies and play pretend with them, be it a tea party or a pizza restaurant. What they love the most, though, are their Rainbocorns from ZURU.
Rainbocorns Sparkle Heart Surprise 2 from ZURU are a series of collectible plushies that come in a bright mystery egg. They’re covered in bright colors, rainbows, and sparkles – basically, they’re any kid’s dream plushie and make for glamorous imaginary friends.
Aren loves playing dress up with them, having them help with cooking and baking in her pretend kitchenette, and they help make bedtime that much sweeter.
I decided I would put a new Rainbocorn in Aren’s Easter basket as an alternative to candy or chocolate. Now, that’s not to say there won’t be any treats this Easter, but we are definitely focusing more on surprises like these that encourage curiosity and imagination.
Plus, a Rainbocorn will last much longer than any candy or chocolate this Easter.
4. Family Reading and Learning
If there’s one thing my kids and I both love to do, it’s read a fun book. My kids are constantly flipping through their favorite books, reading to themselves or reading to me, or trying to get me to read it for them. You can introduce this into your routine (if you haven’t already) by:
- Modeling how to read with your kids
- Visiting the library so they can keep reading new books without having to buy a lot more
- Exploring books with healthy and mindful themes like self-care and environment books
Our favorite book at the moment is “A Child’s Introduction to the Environment“. It’s a fun and very informative guide to Earth and the water, land, and air that’s around us.
Although it’s geared more towards the 8-12 age range, my younger children still enjoy looking at the pictures and pretending they can read what each page says. Kaiden, my 11 year-old, enjoyed reading it because it discusses climate change and has a lot of interactive elements – it’s a book that inspires thoughtfulness and is very engaging while covering a very serious topic.
There are also more stories in the bestselling and award-winning Child’s Introduction Series, so I’m sure you’ll quickly find a family favorite (or a few!).
Here are a few more ideas for kids to beat the boredom this summer!
5. Go for a Family Walk
Get out there and get some family time in while enjoying the good weather! You can do a walk around the neighborhood, walk on a nearby trail, or even just explore a new place you’ve never been to – maybe a downtown area you’ve yet to explore.
I will give one piece of advice, though: make sure you wear great shoes and socks!
I already mentioned that we like to go on a nature walk or check out a local hiking trail, and taking along a scavenger hunt is a great way to keep young children engaged.
If your children are too young for a long walk, head out with the stroller instead! Point out all the things you see along the way, or have kids identify different colors and shapes they see. Maybe even play a game of “I spy with my little eye” as you walk.
Even though your young children may not be able to keep up on a long walk, they are learning how to have an active lifestyle from a young age – and spending quality time with you!
Another fun no-candy Easter idea: Stuff plastic Easter eggs with new pairs of fun socks!
6. Make Mealtime a Part of Family Fun
If you know me, you know I try my best to provide nutritious foods for my kids. I like to encourage them to try new foods, but kids can be really picky.
An easy way to get them involved with our healthy lifestyle is to let them help me prepare meals. They get to pick out a new healthy food at the grocery store (one day we tried dragonfruit), and they help with mixing or serving at dinnertime.
One of my best healthy eating tips is to make meals look more fun and interesting. That can mean putting a small serving of a new food inside of a silicone baking cup on their plate, or cutting food into a fun shape with cookie cutters. (<– those are the exact set we have)
These tactics don’t work every time, but I keep exposing my children to a variety of foods in a healthy diet, and every now and then they surprise me by tasting something new!
7. Get Moving Indoors
On a rainy day – or a very very cold day – getting outside doesn’t always work out. But that doesn’t mean we have to fall back on screen time! There are plenty of healthy activities to do indoors.
My absolute favorite indoor activity is having a dance party. Each family member takes turns telling Alexa to play a song, and we dance and boogie around the kitchen and living room. We don’t care if we look ridiculous; we just move and have fun!
Dance parties are a fun way to get your heart rate up and get a little exercise. It’s perfect for kids of all ages, and it’s really good for your mental wellbeing too!
My kids also love when I set up an obstacle course for them to do. With just a little painter’s tape, I can make a path throughout our house for them to run through over and over again.
Check out our Funny Wake Up Songs playlist for an energizing start to your day!
8. Play Board Games Together
Playing board games may not be your first thought when you are looking for wellness activities for kids, but games really are a great tool that benefit children’s mental health.
Our family tries to have family game night – or FGN as we call it – every weekend. Our two older kids join us on the floor and we play different games – from Scrabble to Sorry to What Do You Meme. It has become such an important part of our family’s time together that our kids actually ASK to have family game night with us.
That’s right – they would rather step away from their video games to play a board game with their parents!
We make sure to prioritize this family time, and it has make a big impact on their relationship with us as well as their emotional health. Find a few games that your kids enjoy playing, and set up a night to play together every week! You may be surprised by how much fun you have together.
Want more things to do when bored for kids?
Check out our list of over 50 ideas!
MEET AMANDA
Amanda is a mom of 4 living a mostly crunchy lifestyle outside of Atlanta, GA with her husband, 2 dogs, and a cat. As a former special education teacher who also has her personal training certification — Amanda really enjoys teaching others how to do things!
When she’s not working, Amanda enjoys DIY projects, exercising, photography, hiking, and long walks through Target.