How to exercise more as a family by having funFamily walks, bike rides and back-yard sports games are great, but there are many ways to make fitness appealing to kids. Here are a few:

Turn chores into games. How fast can your child sweep all the "evil monsters" -- the dirt and crumbs -- off the kitchen floor? How many stray socks can he find by sprinting all over the house and squatting down to look under each bed? How many bags of leaves can he fill in 30 minutes of back-yard racing?

Sign up for a race. Jogging around the neighborhood tends to be more fun if you're getting in shape for a fundraising event such as a charity 5K or 1-mile fun run.

Use commercial breaks. Whenever a favorite TV show is on, have each child plan and lead an exercise during one of the breaks. You also can just turn on some upbeat music and dance.

Make walks more entertaining. Turn your regular route into an obstacle course by jumping over fences, running up and down stairs or balancing on rocks. And learn which streets have cute dogs and cats to see -- that's always a child-pleaser.

Create cool indoor games. For example, take a pair of dice from a board game, pick an exercise -- jumping jacks, sit-ups or push-ups are good ones -- and roll the dice to see how many of the moves to do. Or blow up balloons and see how long your kids can keep them aloft by hitting them with one assigned body part (head, elbow, knee).

DAILY PRESS (NEWPORT NEWS, VA.)

3-D in your faceMovie theater-supplied 3-D glasses are sometimes too big for little faces. To the rescue comes Hasbro's Transformers Cine-Mask 3D, which combines Bumblebee and Optimus Prime masks with built-in passive 3-D glasses.

While hitting stores (at $10) in July -- timed to the July 1 release of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" -- the masks also will be compatible with any 3-D film featuring RealD or Disney 3D technology.

PHILADELPHIA NEWS