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How To Stay Healthy For The Summer

Added on May 24, 2012

Now that dance classes are over, most children are taking a break from the weekly lessons for the summer. While summer is a time of activity, swimming, biking, running, it’s still important to maintain a healthy lifestyle and diet in order to be ready to enter the studio in the fall. What steps should you take, as a parent, to ensure that your child is meeting the proper physical activity and nutritional needs over the summer?

Exercise Guidelines For Children

Children between one and four should spend 180 minutes each day being active. Whether walking, playing outside, swimming or dancing.
By the age of five, children should have at least 60 minutes per day of energetic activity, like biking, running, hopping or skipping.
Guidelines state that children under 5 should have no more than one hour each day in front of a screen, whether it’s a TV screen, computer screen or iPad screen.

Maintaining a Healthy Diet

While exercising and being active are critical to good health, following a healthy diet is vital as well. The table below from Canada’s Food Guide outlines the number of servings from each of the four food groups based on age and gender. Remember that a portion is usually the size of your palm or between ½ and 1 cup of liquid.

When trying to ensure that your child is active and eating healthy, remember that parents are key players when it comes to fostering a healthy lifestyle and awareness of the importance of being active and eating properly. Parents need to lead by example and eat healthy and engage in fun physical activity together as a family. By staying healthy over the summer, your dancer will be ready to take on the dance world in the fall.