Top 14 Easy & Fun Exercises for Kids

Exercises are one of the most effective ways for people of all ages to strengthen their physical and mental health and improve overall performance in daily activities.

Integrating exercises into children's routines not only accelerates their development by improving many essential physical and cognitive abilities but also enables them to develop healthy habits.

Because exercises require intense effort, it's important to find fun ways to encourage kids to do them. For this reason, we have compiled entertaining activities that children can enjoy. Let's immerse ourselves in the world of fun and easy exercises for kids!

The Best Fun Indoor Exercises for Kids

There is little space for physical activities inside the home. However, this is not an excuse to skip exercise. With the right exercises, the indoors can be just as fun and full of opportunities as the outdoors.

Let's explore fun exercises to do at home for kids so they can maintain healthy habits even when they're inside the four walls!

1. Bear Crawls

Children love to observe the movements of animals and imitate them. You can turn this into a great exercise. Just show them the basics of the movement and leave the rest to their imagination! You'll be surprised how much fun they have.

This exercise focuses on the muscles of kids’ shoulders, back, chest, legs, and arms.

How to Do It

• Get on all fours like a bear. You can also show a bear image for them to understand the stance.
• Spread your arms shoulder-width apart and keep your hips in the air throughout the exercise.
• Walk by first moving your right hand and left foot in sync and then moving your left hand and right foot in sync.
• You can spark their imaginations by giving them a starting point like, "You're looking for your friends in the woods."

2. MentalUP Fitness

Digitization is thought to reduce children's passion and opportunities for physical activity. But when you find the right digital exercise platform, it's possible to create the opposite effect and make exercising your child's greatest source of entertainment.

MentalUP's authority-approved exercises in categories such as balance, strength, flexibility, and cardio help your child do effective, comprehensive, and enjoyable exercises indoors and outdoors regularly.

3. Push-Ups

Fun bodyweight exercises for kids are great options for those who don't have a lot of equipment at home. For this exercise, you only need a soft surface, such as a yoga mat, and free space as long as your child's body length.

Push-ups have always been one of the most popular indoor exercises as it is a practical, fun, and effective exercises. They work multiple muscle groups, such as arms, chest, abs, hips, and legs.

How to Do It

• Get on all fours with your hands slightly wider than your shoulders.
• Straighten your arms and legs.
• Lower your body until your chest almost touches the ground.
• At this point, you should pause and push yourself up again.
• Repeat the process.

4. Crunches

Everyone knows that kids love to roll on the floor. So here's one of the best fun floor exercises for kids! Who didn't get into crunch competitions with their friends as a kid?

Requiring only an area equal to body length and a soft surface, crunches are one of the most practical and beneficial exercises. Crunches work on various muscle groups, such as the abs, chest, and legs, and increase the overall strength and flexibility of the body.

How to Do It

• Lie on your back.
• Have your feet hip-width apart.
• Bend your knees and touch the ground with the soles of your feet.
• Place your arms on your chest.
• You should inhale while contracting the abdominal muscles.
• Then exhale and raise your upper body.
• Inhale and return to the starting position.
• Repeat the process.

5. Crab Walks

Here’s another exercise whose effect will increase with your imagination! Just like bear crawls, we benefit from the unique activity patterns of animals again to perform this exercise.

This exercise allows children to work muscle groups such as the triceps, abdominals, legs, and shoulders.

How to Do It

• Sit with both knees bent and both feet flat on the floor.
• Place your hands slightly behind you, flat on the floor.
• Lift your hips off the ground into a bridge position and walk backward.

6. Planks

How much fun can standing still be? Pretty fun if you're competing with gravity! Moreover, your child does not need any other tool than a flat floor for this exercise!

Planks work multiple muscle groups, such as the chest, abdomen, back, and pelvis, increasing overall strength, endurance, and balance.

How to Do It

• Get on all fours with your hands slightly wider than your shoulders.
• Straighten your arms and legs.
• Bend your elbows until your forearms touch the floor under your shoulders.
• Make sure your body becomes a straight line from your feet to your head.
• Tighten your abs and look between your hands to maintain a correct spinal position.

7. Musical Chairs

Some exercises, like musical chairs, are designed to be done in groups.

Group activities provide development in social skills as well as physical and cognitive development. That's why fun teamwork exercises for kids are just as important as individual exercises.

This exercise improves the reaction time of children as well as their abdominal and leg muscles.

How to Do It

• For musical chairs, you need one chair less than the number of children who will do the exercise.
• Arrange the chairs in a circle.
• Make sure each chair is facing outward.
• Start playing a fun song.
• Children should rotate around the chairs.
• When the music stops, each child should sit in the nearest chair.
• If you want to add some competition elements, you can make a rule that the child who can't find a chair is eliminated.

Favorite Fun Outdoor Exercises for Kids

Combined with fresh air, exercises can become much more enjoyable and healthy. Indoors have limits and therefore do not allow for many unique outdoor exercises.

Outdoor exercises are excellent opportunities to diversify your child's exercise routine.

1. Running

Running is an extremely enjoyable exercise, especially if there is a goal. It has a very flexible structure and can easily be turned into a group exercise or modified for entertainment by using running games for kids.

Running is one of the most fun speed exercises for kids that improves children's fitness and endurance. It works all muscle groups, especially the legs. And it is an essential exercise for heart and lung health.

How to Do It

Although it may seem instinctive, there are tips to make running more beneficial and effective:

• Start by doing warm-up exercises to prepare the muscles for running.
• Keep feet facing straight forward and position your hands at waist level.
• Make sure your posture is upright but relaxed
• Set goals to increase the level of fun. These goals can be reaching a specific point or catching an object.

2. Online Workouts

Exercising outdoors can be one of the most enjoyable activities, but finding a safe and beneficial exercise isn't always easy. Online resources, such as MentalUP, are ideal for instantly discovering compatible exercises for your child that focus on multiple muscle groups.

Kids can easily perform the various scientific and entertaining exercise programs on different categories of the fitness & sports module of MentalUP such as balance, strength, flexibility, and cardio.

3. Jumping

Jumping is a skill we perform on a daily basis. But jumping is not just a daily skill–it's one of the most fun leg exercises for kids. Just like running, jumping is a flexible exercise that has a positive effect on the whole body.

You can make a significant contribution to your child’s development with this flexible and effective exercise that targets leg and core muscles and is supported by cognitive abilities, such as coordination and balance.

How to Do It

• Make sure to warm up before jumping.
• You can use a jump rope. Jump over the rope you’re holding with both arms and swing it over your head.
• To make the jumping exercise enjoyable, you can show your kids animals, such as kangaroos, as an example. So they can use their imagination.
• Jumping can also be turned into a competitive group activity, just like running, by setting goals.

4. Catching

Catching is a unique combination of running and jumping and has its own benefits. Its potential to adapt to competitive activities makes catching a very popular exercise.

Catching affects almost all muscle groups, especially the legs, biceps, and hips. It also improves reaction time and coordination.

How to Do It

• Pick up a non-sharp object, such as a ball or frisbee.
• Throw the object at random points within your child's reach.
• Ask your child to throw the object back at you.
• Continue the loop by throwing the object to another spot.

5. Cycling

The bicycle is one of the simplest means of transportation and is powered by human strength. Most of us have wonderful childhood memories of cycling.

Cycling improves balance and coordination and improves leg and hip muscles.

How to Do It

• Identify a safe area away from traffic.
• Make sure your child's protective equipment is complete and equipped.
• Children need to get used to lifting their feet and finding the pedals before they start cycling. Make sure they are looking straight ahead, not at their feet.
• Before they start pedaling, make sure they understand how much pressure is required for the brakes to work.
• They are now ready to pedal. It will take time for them to find their balance. Support them until they are fully competent.

6. Tag

Tag, a combination of chase and escape, is one of the most fun team exercises for kids that offers almost unlimited excitement and many variants.

By playing tag, children can increase their social communication skills, expand the limits of their cognitive abilities, and boost their physical health by working their entire bodies.

How to Do It

• To make the game effective, you must first set a rule for the tagged player. You can have the captured person tickled, eliminated, silenced, or turned into a tagger.
• The children move away from each other at equal distances, and one of them is chosen as the tagger.
• The tagger runs and tries to tap another child. The kid tagged by the tagger has to follow the assigned rule.

7. Treasure Hunt

Adventure and physical activity combined! Sounds exciting, doesn't it? A treasure hunt is one of the top easy and fun team-building exercises for kids.

The purpose of the exercise is for children to do tasks that will trigger their excitement in line with clues and finally reach the treasure.

Tasks require the simultaneous use of a range of physical and mental functions. Thus, children develop specific muscle groups while also improving abilities such as critical thinking, memory, and problem-solving.

How to Do It

• Create clues and a map for your child, along with the tasks they need to do in order.
• Create a track linked to tasks where children can do physical activities.
• Children should try to reach the treasure by doing the tasks.
• Put a reward in the treasure chest to encourage them.

Why Does Exercise Matter for Kids’ Both Physical and Cognitive Development?

Exercises provide much more than just muscle development, entertainment, or social interaction. Safe and healthy exercise can provide the following benefits:

• Improvement in muscles and motor skills for higher physical activity performance
• Minimizing disease risks by having a physically and mentally healthy body
• Improvement in cognitive abilities, such as hand-eye coordination, reaction time, memory, and logic
• Overcoming lack of concentration and focus
• Orientation towards healthy habits
• Better social relationships

Frequently Asked Questions

Now that we have learned the importance of exercises for children and the most fun and practical exercises, we can begin to chart a route that covers the exercises that are most suitable for our children.