HRM Parent Blog

With technology so readily available (not to mention socially acceptable), it can be challenging for parents to break their children's tech-habits and tear them away from the tv/computer/iPad screen when they have long stretches of unscheduled time on their hands...like two months of summer vacation for example.

Summer camps are an ideal option for many parents. By engaging children in a summer camp atmosphere, studies have found enormous benefits not only socially but physically as well. Kids will learn a variety of new skills, increase their social interaction, and get plenty of exercise while having fun and learning all day long!

And you don't usually have to look far to find a camp that is the right fit for you and your family - many local businesses these days offer day camps that specialize in all sorts of areas, from art and music to sports and recreation to education and technology.

Here are a few tips designed to you choose the right camp for your son or daughter this summer:

Duration: Many camps offer both full-day and half-day options. Half-day camps can be a great option for very young children or for a child's first camp experience. They can also work well for children who don't like to be away from home.

Location: Make getting to and from camp as easy as possible for you and your child. Consider a camp that isn't too far away from your home or work, for ease of drop-off and pick up. If you commute to work, look for a camp location that is on (or at least near) your regular route to keep from over-complicating you and your family's regular routine. Many camps also offer early drop-offs and late pick-up options to allow parents a bit of flexibility - fair warning though, check with the camp administrators first as some camps charge extra for this convenience.

Cost: While researching the cost of the camp program, be sure to figure out the total cost. Are there additional charges for some of the activities or field trips? Are you expected to provide additional equipment? Is lunch included, is that an extra cost or do you have to provide it yourself? What about snacks? What is the refund policy if your child gets sick? Is your camp registration fee eligible for a Federal Children's Fitness or Arts tax credit?

Camp type: Ideally you'll want to make sure that the camp you ultimately choose will have activities your little one will enjoy. After all, you want them to want to go to camp rather than having to fight to get them out of bed and out the door every morning, right?

Ask yourself some of these questions when trying to narrow down the type of camp your child will attend:

   -Are you simply looking for childcare during the summer months, or are you hoping to help your child learn or refine a particular skill?

   -Does your child want to hang out with friends or try something totally new? 

   -Do you want him/her to gain leadership skills or learn how to be a better team player?

   -Does your child need to learn how to manage responsibilities or is he/she learning to be more independent?

Decision Time: Once you've narrowed down the actual location of the camp, have decided on a full vs. half-day option, and have thought about the type of camp that will be best for your child, ask for his/her help in making the final choice. Involving children in the selection process is a great way to get them excited and looking forward to their summer camp adventure. To help simplify the decision-making process, narrow it down to two or three camp options and then let them pick which one they like best.

No matter what type of camp you choose, your child will most likely benefit greatly. They should walk away from the experience having learned something new, increased their self-confidence, made a few new friends, gotten plenty of exercise, improved their social skills and most importantly, had a wonderful time!

Dalplex, Dalhousie University's main fitness and recreation facility, has been proudly serving the community for over 30 years, offering a wide variety of fitness, wellness and recreation programs and classes for adults, children, youth and seniors.  Visit their website or follow them on facebook.

If you've been told that you or your child are allergic or sensitive to dairy and are trying to avoid it as a result, don't panic! I often hear from parents who are worried about their ability to get their kids the calcium they need without milk, but the truth is we don't need "three servings of milk a day" to do this. If you are creative and diligent, you can easily provide your children or other family members with the calcium they need by choosing the right dairy alternative for your family, and including good sources of calcium in your family's daily diet.

If you are following a dairy elimination diet, there are many dairy alternatives you can try, for example:

Soy milk (always buy organic, as non-organic is almost always made from genetically modified or "GMO" soy beans)

Rice milk (it's not always fortified with calcium, so check your labels!); and/or

Almond milk

In my experience, most children come to like almond milk. Just don't try to pass it off as cow's milk (they are too smart for that!) and introduce it slowly and in small amounts.

It's naturally sweet flavour seems to appeal to them. You can use almond milk as a substitute for dairy in almost all baking and cooking. If you visit my recipe blog you will see that I never use cow's milk in recipes and they generally call for almond milk in its place (www.simple-balance.ca).

You will be able to find soy cheese and yoghurt alternatives as well. In addition, the dairy-sensitive member of your family may find they are able to tolerate goats' milk and cheese better than similar cow's milk-derived products, as goat milk's nutritional profile is closer to that of human milk.

There are lots of great sources of calcium in foods other than dairy products. Most of the sources listed above are available fortified and will contain comparable calcium to cow's milk (as does fortified orange juice), but there are also many other non-dairy sources, such as:

Firm tofu (1/2 cup): 258 mg
Collard greens (1 cup cooked): 220 mg

Hummus made with tahini (1/2 cup): 137 mg
Broccoli (1 cup cooked): 136 mg
Quinoa (1 cup): 120 mg
Haddock (1 fillet): 111 mg
Oatmeal (cooked, I cup): 115 mg
Chickpeas (1 cup cooked): 106 mg

If you are concerned you or your child are not meeting your recommended daily intake, you can consider using a good-quality calcium supplement. Ask your health practitioner or pediatrician for a recommendation if you need some guidance!

Wendy McCallum, LLB, RHN, is passionate about providing busy parents with the tools & support they need to feed their families wholesome food, so everyone can play, learn, and feel better!  She is a mother of two terrific HRM kids, aged 7 &8.  For information and recipe ideas, visit her website.

Easter is just a few short days away and for many of us look forward to this time of year to spend a bit more quality time with our families.

It's also a time for both children and adults alike to over-indulge in lots of chocolate and other treats.

As you plan your family's Easter weekend, make it a point to establish healthy traditions.  Easter provides a perfect opportunity to make healthful, outdoor family fun a bit part of what makes holidays "happy."  When your own children grow up they'll be likely to repeat traditions that bring back warm memories.

Here are a few ideas for how to work a bit of exercise into your Easter celebrations:

- Instead of chocolate eggs for your egg hunt, use hollow plastic eggs that you can open and fill with smaller treats like a handful of m&m, a few mini eggs or foil wrapped eggs or some jelly beans.  The kids will get a smaller amount of candy overall and you'll make a buck stretch a lot further.

- You can also turn your egg hunt into a treasure hunt by putting small clues in the hollow eggs, so your kids know where to look for the next one.  Bump up the activity level (and the fun quotient) by making them travel from clue to clue in a silly way, like hopping on one foot, doing the crab walk, bouncing like a bunny or crawling on their hands and knees. 

- Play Easter Egg Tag: Tie an empty Easter basket around each player's waist. Give each of the players some plastic eggs (you can reuse the ones you used for the egg hunt). Instruct the kids to try to get rid of their eggs by putting them in other player's baskets. The winner is the person with the least eggs in their basket or the first one to get rid of all of their eggs.

- Have an Easter bunny race: Substitute a potato sack for an old pillow cases for this one and get the kids to decorate them by drawing Easter eggs and bunnies on them with marker. Then get them to climb in so they have to hop like the Easter bunny and get them to race from one end of the yard or driveway to the other. If you're stuck inside on a rainy day, turn your living room or playroom into an Easter bunny obstacle course - get your little bunnies to hop around furniture and crawl under coffee tables to slow them down. Or get them to go one at a time and time them, to avoid them crashing in to each other if the space isn't big enough.

- Try your hand at Easter-egg bocce ball: An Italian-inspired Easter game, this one is played with each person receiving a colored hard-boiled egg. Take a white egg and gently toss it onto the lawn or carpet. Take turns rolling the colored eggs to see who can get the closest to the white one without touching it - or breaking their egg. For real fun, try it outside with raw eggs.

- Have an egg roll race: Maybe you can't be at the annual egg roll at the White House, but you can start your own Easter tradition at home. Each child is given a hard-boiled Easter egg. The object is to get it from the starting line to the finish line. There are several ways to roll the egg. The White House version allows the kids to push it with a spoon. An alternative is to push the egg with the feet without cracking the shell. Alternately, the kids can be instructed to get on their hands and knees and push their eggs with their noses. The egg roll can be held outside if the weather is nice, or inside if the weather doesn't co-operate.

- If you're lucky, you'll get a beautiful spring day so you can get some fresh air together. Go for a family bike ride or walk in the park. Make a hopscotch  with sidewalk chalk. Climb the jungle gym at the playground or skip rocks down by the lake.

Dalplex, Dalhousie University's main fitness and recreation facility, has been proudly serving the community for over 30 years, offering a wide variety of fitness, wellness and recreation programs and classes for adults, children, youth and seniors.  Visit their website or follow them on facebook.

March Break: two words that have kids leaping with joy as vacation begins but all too often have parents' hearts sinking like a stone at the same time. After the initial euphoria of being out of school wears off, kids all too often end up whining "I'm bored. There's nothing to do," before the week is even half over.

Whatever your plans, there are fun ways to get physical activity into the March Break mix.  It just takes a bit of imagination to keep the little darlings happy and to stop them -- and you -- from climbing the walls.

Active vacations
Are you one of the lucky ones who get to escape the sleet and slush of our Maritime winter in exchange for sunnier skies (and temperatures most likely)? Just because you're on vacation doesn't mean you and your family have a free pass to be lazy. You don't need to truck the kids to the hotel gym to get some exercise in though - family holidays offer lots of great opportunities to expose your kids to sport and physical activity (and best of all, they will just think they're having fun on vacation). Take them to the hotel pool, go beachcombing, explore local parks or hiking trails or spend the day exploring theme parks on foot.

Involve your children in the planning
Spending March Break at home? No problem! Kids are more likely to actively engage in the activity if they have had some say in it. Have everyone write down their interests and then pull together a list of activities to do based around those interests. Ask everyone to suggest a few indoor activities, a few outdoor activities and a few ‘field trip' activities but make sure everyone makes at least one ‘active' activity suggestion for each category- that will help to ensure your activity list doesn't end up filled with sedentary activities like movie and/or video game marathons.

Put together an activity jar
Now, take that list of activities you and your family just made and go one step further: put each suggestion on its own slip of paper and put them in a jar. Then have everyone pick an activity or two out of the jar each day. It doesn't really matter if they are activities you might have planned on doing anyway -- it's fun to pick out of the jar and be surprised!

Check out what's available in your community for day camps
Working parents often scramble to find childcare arrangements over March Break. Local businesses, community centres, art galleries, museums, etc will often put together special March Break programs.

Fitness and recreation centres like Dalplex have March Break day camps in place to keep your kids active all week. Your kids can tune up their bodies and social skills by spending their days playing,  cooperating with others, following directions, trying new activities and making new friends along the way.

You can also check out the list of local March Break camps that HRM Parent has been compiling.

And finally:

Divide and conquer
Divvy the week up between other parents who are in the same boat. Whether it's a trip to the Emera Oval, a morning of building snowmen, an afternoon at the playground, or an evening at the movies, joining forces with other parents can make the daunting task of planning a whole week's more manageable for all involved, not to mention that kids get a change of scenery by going to play somewhere else with their friends.

Dalplex, Dalhousie University's main fitness and recreation facility, has been proudly serving the community for over 30 years, offering a wide variety of fitness, wellness and recreation programs and classes for adults, children, youth and seniors.  Visit their website or follow them on facebook.

I am SO over winter. Done. Finished with it. I'm tired of dealing with the cold, tired of the seemingly perpetual darkness, tired of the rain and the snow, the ice and the slush. I'm tired of it all and frankly it leaves me feeling...well...feeling tired all the time.

If this sounds familiar to you, it's important to know you are not alone.

When the weather is bleak, the temperatures are frigid, and there's day after day with little outdoor activity or sunlight, it's no wonder we end up feeling down in the dumps, suffering from a case of the all-too-common winter blues.

The winter blues is a term used to describe physical and emotional symptoms triggered by too little activity and sunshine. Symptoms include lethargy, irritability and sadness; this typically leads to a decreased interest in exercise, which in turn leads to decreased energy and enthusiasm. It's a vicious cycle of inactivity and lack of interest.

And it's important to realize not just us grown-ups suffer from this seasonal ailment. You may have noticed your kids are having a harder time getting up in the mornings for school, that they are unusually whiney or irritable, or that they don't seem as interested in the activities that they usually enjoy.   

While chilly temperatures might give everyone a reason to burrow under the covers, don't let it become an excuse for being lazy. Make outdoor activity time a priority for you and your family this winter:

Build snowmen in the yard or go sledding at the neighborhood park.

No snow? No problem. Bundle everyone up and go for walk around the neighborhood or your local park.

Skate at the Oval. You can borrow skates (both children and adults sizes) if you don't have any of your own.

Too rainy or too cold to play outside? Play charades, hide and seek inside or build forts out of pillows and blankets. Got cabin fever? Get out of the house and take the kids to play indoor mini golf, enjoy a family swim at your local pool or spend the afternoon blowing off steam at an indoor play area.

Remember that as little as 15 minutes of sunlight and exercise can change your mood, increase your energy and keep you and your family healthy and happy (and sane) until springtime!

Dalplex, Dalhousie University's main fitness and recreation facility, has been proudly serving the community for over 30 years, offering a wide variety of fitness, wellness and recreation programs and classes for adults, children, youth and seniors.  Visit their website or follow them on facebook.