The Tens Circuit: Indoor Exercise for the Whole Family

My husband and I have made major lifestyle changes this year regarding health and fitness. Exercise has become an important part of our day-to-day life and the boys have taken notice.

We want to live healthy lives FOR our kids and WITH our kids, so we’ve been looking for ways to exercise together! We also homeschool our boys and physical education is part of our school day!

In the summer, there are lots of options for exercising together, but we’ve had to get a little more creative this winter! That’s when I came up with the Tens Circuit – an active workout for everyone and a little competition to get motivated!

Here’s how it works…

Equipment Needed:

• Piece of paper or dry erase board
• Pencil or dry erase marker
• Timer or clock
• Stairs, jump rope, weights {optional}

Instructions:

Write each person’s name on the top of a piece of paper {for tracking purposes}. Make a sheet for yourself as well! You’re not going to be sitting on the couch for this one!

Choose 5-10 exercises you and your boys are capable of doing and write them along the side of the paper. A few examples I used with my 4 1/2 and 6 1/2 year old:

• Jumping jacks
• Crunches
• Pushups
• Lunges
• Squats
• Running stairs

Demonstrate each exercise to your kids before you start to help things move more smoothly! Trust me!

In order to put a tally mark on your piece of paper, you and the kids must do ten of one particular exercise. Ten jumping jacks = one tally mark next to “jumping jacks” on your paper! Ten times up and down the stairs = one tally mark!

I let the boys choose which exercise they wanted to do next, so we weren’t always doing the same exercise at the same time. It also gave them a sense of ownership in the activity when I wasn’t telling them what to do.

I had the timer set for 30 minutes and we kept going until it beeped!

Then it was time to count up our tally marks - good for a little accountability, competition, and math practice! In our case, the boys were able to practice counting tally marks and skip counting by tens, but older kids could work on multiplication facts!

The great thing about the Tens Circuit is it is customizable for each family and Mom & Dad can get good exercise in as well! And, if your guys are like mine, they will ask to do it over and over again!

Let’s get to know each other a little bit better here! Tell us how old your boys are and what exercises you might include in a Tens Circuit with them!

Erin is a Jesus-follower, doctor’s wife, three-boy mama, co-founder of Raising Boys Media, and writer at Home with the Boys.