Get kids off their screens and on their feet

As any parent overseeing home-school knows: Zoom PE is hardly a hard-driving Peloton class. It's more like your kid lying on the floor of the living room doing halfhearted leg-lifts by the light of a laptop.

Many students, particularly tweens and teens, are not moving their bodies as much as they are supposed to be — during a pandemic or otherwise (60 minutes per day for ages 6 to 17, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Yet, with many organized team sports on hiatus, what's an increasingly lazy child to do? More accurately: What's a mother or father of an increasingly lazy child to do?

Many parents are taking charge, finding informal and creative ways to entice their isolated tweens and teens off their screens and outside — with others, safely. Here are a few ideas from families around the country, all almost-guaranteed hits, even with winter coming.

Start a running club: In San Francisco, a group of sixth-graders has been gathering twice a week to run 2 miles. Masks are required, and breaks are frequent, as is post-run ice cream. Started by parents in August, the club has been such a hit, attracting from six to 20 kids each run, that some occasionally call for a third afternoon per week or even a 7 a.m. before-school meetup (in which case they serve doughnuts).

But treats are not the ultimate draw. "I like the experience of being with my peers and actually doing something, all at the same time," 11-year-old Henry Gersick said. "Instead of just sitting there."

Jump on it. Since the pandemic began, jumping rope has become "a TikTok craze," according to Nick Woodard, a 14-time world champion jump-roper and founder of Learnin' the Ropes, a program designed to teach kids and adults the joy of jumping. "All you need is time, some space and a $5 jump rope, and you're good to go," Woodard said.

Based in Bowling Green, Ky., Woodard and his wife, Kaylee (a six-time world champion in her own right), have been leading virtual workshops for children as young as 6. "They have so much fun, they don't even realize they're getting exercise," Kaylee Woodard said. But a selling point right now is that jumping rope — unlike team sports — is something you can do together, apart.

Keep it in the family. Dave Rubenstein, a father of two in Lawrence, Kan., has enacted Forced Family Fun Time. "We call it FFFT," Rubenstein said of the weekly activity. "It usually involves a hike around the lake in town, but it could be any outdoor activity teenagers typically hate. And if they complain, the punishment is more FFFT."

Tap into pedal power. "Kids are biking like never before," said Jon Solomon, a spokesman for the Aspen Institute's Sports & Society Program, the nonprofit's initiative to help build healthy communities through sports. Leisure bike sales have grown 203% year over year from 2019, he said.

A Denver youngster's father has created a half-mile dirt bike track on his property. Wyatt Isgrig, 14, and his friends tackle it often by mountain bike, scooter or motorized dirt bike.

Invent your own game. One otherwise boring day, Solomon and his son, 11, came up with something they call hock-ball. It involves a hockey stick, a tennis ball and an empty sidewalk or street.

Solomon attempted to explain. "You roll the tennis ball like a kickball — it could be smooth, or slow or bouncy — and the person with the stick tries to hit it past the pitcher, then runs back and forth to home plate." There are points and innings, and it's apparently fun for all ages. "Only problem is, the ball inevitably rolls under a parked car," Solomon said.

If all else fails, bribe them. Pay your kid — a quarter, a dime or even just a penny — per minute to walk the pandemic puppy you just got.