Our Community in Fairfax County, Virginia

Take your daughter to the park and be active with her

• Help her to learn the fundamental skills of running, throwing, catching, and kicking.

Photograph your child being active

• Enlarge the photo, frame it, be proud of it!

Actively support your daughter’s involvement in physical activity

• Buy her good equipment—not her brother’s hand-me-downs
• Come and watch her games
• Consider volunteering

Be an active role model yourself

• Mom’s participation in sports increased participation rates of her child by 22%
• Dad’s participation in sports increased participation rates of his child by 11%

Emphasize fun and fitness rather than competition and sliminess

• Encourage your daughter to try a variety of new activities, and help her acquire the skills and equipment she needs to participate.
• Avoid comments about your daughter’s body size and shape.
• Love and support her just the way she is.
• Don’t undermine her confidence, and take the joy out of playing, by telling her she "throws like a girl."  Help her to learn the skills she needs to enjoy sports.

Introduce your daughter to active women

• All too often women in sports are viewed as cheerleaders, water girls, or chauffeurs.  Your daughter needs to be exposed to women who are athletes, coaches, officials, and leaders in sports.
• Buy sports books about women athletes.
• Watch women’s sports events on TV with your daughter.
• Take your daughter to women’s sports competitions in your community.
• Read the sports pages with her and follow the performances of America’s great athletes (such as Jackie Joyner-Kersey, Shannon Miller, Mia Hamm, Monica Seles, Gail Devers, Kristi Yamaguchi, Rebecca Lobo, and Janet Evans).

Plan Active Vacations or Weekend Excursions

• Try hiking, cross-country skiing, and rafting.

Relaxation is a learned skill.  Use these activities whenever the children seem to need them—or even when they don't!

Statues & Rag Dolls.  With the children first in a standing position, ask them to show you what statues look like.  (If necessary, remind them statues are often made of metal or stone.)  Now ask them to show you what rag dolls look like (if you’ve got one to demonstrate with, all the better).  Repeat, alternating between the two.  Continue the process with the children kneeling, sitting and, finally, lying down.  Always end with the rag dolls!

I’m Melting!  “Melting” is a wonderful—and fun—relaxation activity.  Talk about the melting of ice cream cones, snow sculptures, and ice cubes with your children and then ask them to pretend to be one of these things.  Challenge them to show you just how slowly they can melt!  Another possibility—one the children especially enjoy—is melting like the witch in The Wizard of Oz.  As the children slowly dissolve, they cry out ‘I’m melting, I’m melting…”

Balloons.  Breath control plays an important role in relaxation.  When we inhale slowly and then exhale twice as slowly, we decrease the supply of oxygen and increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood, thus slowing down the activity of the nerves and brain.  To promote deep breathing, you can ask the children to expand (by inhaling) and contract (by exhaling) like balloons, alternately (and slowly) inflating and deflating.  Ask them to “inflate” through their noses, with mouths closed, and to “deflate” by blowing out through their mouths.  (Initially demonstrating with an actual balloon can help make this image more vivid.)

Five outdoor games that emphasize cooperation rather than elimination.  Children will be problem solving as they get their hearts pumping!

Cat & Mouse.  This simple game involves lots of action, with constant participation by everyone involved, and will result in squeals of delight.

One child is designated as the cat, with the rest of the children acting as mice.  The object of the game is for the cat to catch a mouse.  Once caught, the mouse who is tagged becomes the cat; and the original cat becomes a mouse!  But the new cat isn’t allowed to tag that particular mouse first, which allows him or her to get away and for greater involvement for everyone.

Freeze Tag.  Although this game requires players to be momentarily sedentary, they’re never eliminated.  And, if their fellow players do their job, they’ll quickly be back in the game.

One player is It.  Tagged players must remain frozen, feet apart, until another player crawls under their legs!  If t can freeze everybody, the last person to be frozen gets to be It for the next game.

Variations:

• You can turn this into a game of TV tag by requiring the child “unfreezing” another child to simultaneously touch the latter and call out the name of a television show, like “Blue’s Clues” or “Sesame Street.”  The hardest part is that the name of a TV show can only be used once!
• On a sunny day, play a game of Shadow Tag, in which It has to tag a player by stepping on her shadow.  When a child is tagged, she’s frozen until another player steps on her shadow.

Players are paired off, with all but two linking arms.  Of the remaining two, one is It and the other is the one who’s going to be chased.  At your signal, everyone starts to run.  The child being chased has to try to link up with one of the pairs.  If that happens, the child in that pair whose elbow isn’t hooked becomes the new It; and the original It becomes the new player being chased.  If a tagging occurs instead, the players simply reverse roles – but there are no immediate tag-backs allowed!

Blob Tag.  A simple modification to an old game eliminates elimination and keeps all the children participating and active.  You’ll still need one child to be It.  But, with this version, tagged players hold hands with It and all others tagged.  The result is a cluster of kids that keeps growing until there’s just one big blob running around together!

Seaweed Tag.  Mark off a large area to serve as the “ocean.”  One child, acting as “seaweed,” stands in the middle of this area, with the rest of the children (the “fish”) lined up on end of the ocean.  At your signal, the fish try to cross the ocean.  If tagged by the seaweed, they also become seaweed and must keep one foot planted on the ground at all times.  Those fish who make it to the other side now try to cross again.  The game continues until all the fish have become seaweed!  The last fish tagged is the first to act as seaweed for the next round.