Family Time Fitness – Fitness 4 Homeschool- Review

Growing up I attended a small public school from kindergarten all the way to high school graduation. I have vivid memories of P.E. some were positive and others were negative. I enjoyed the physical activity but situations like “choosing teams” made this gangly middle school girl who had two left feet, one of the last to be chosen for teams.  Physical exercise though is such an important part of life that I jumped at the opportunity for our family to try out Family Time Fitness-Fitness 4 Homeschool!

It was created and founded in 2010 by:

Mike Hanik, Professor of Kinesiology at Texas A&M & Youth Fitness Specialist

Jeremiah Knopp, Certified Fitness Trainer & Nutritionist

Darren Knopp, Technology and Business Management

There are so many kinds of curriculum available for numerous subjects but they found that the one that was missing for homeschoolers was for Physical Education. That’s a concerning thought when so much of the country has a weight problem.  It is so important to start a child thinking about fitness while they are young so it becomes incorporated into their daily lives as they mature.

How did it work for our family? Well, I decided to get my husband in on this review so let me hand the keyboard over to him!

Thank you, Joy for the introduction. Our son has Prader-Willi Syndrome and burns calories slower than other children. On top of that he has low muscle tone and is always hungry even after he eats. When one is homeschooling a child with special needs daily exercise is especially important. Our son enjoys walking, basketball and baseball but what to do on those rainy days? We have been using Family Time Fitness 4 Homeschool and have had a fun time with it.

We started on a rainy day. My daughter 12, and son 14 were bored and looking for an activity. I suggested we exercise with Family Time Fitness 4 Homeschool. The two children accepted the challenge and we began watching a video demonstration of the exercises. I like that there is a video showing how to do each physical activity. Many physical education programs are boring as the event is read off of a sheet of paper. This is not so with this program. The video of each activity shows different age and ability levels from a very young child to the parent doing exercises. The videos make it encouraging and fun to participate.

The age levels are from K-8^th (5-13) and start with warm up exercises, then activity/game play, cool down and an outdoor activity.

There is minimal equipment needed and each section describes what skill set will be worked on for each group of activities. An example would be lesson 143 which teaches: mobility, balance, coordination, flexibility, strength, agility, jumping reacting, rhythm, throwing and catching. There are 3 warm up activities for this lesson one of which is my children’s favorite…popcorn. With popcorn everyone starts on their back looking up at the ceiling (make sure there is plenty of room between people) Arms are extended over the head. The legs are bent up to the chest and the arms hold the legs. The position is held for 10 seconds the child “Pops Out” to the original position. This one caused a lot of giggles in anticipation of the “pop out”.  The giggles were encouraging for me as I could tell this was not a trudge through lesson but that it was actually fun for the kids.

Each lesson is designed to give 25-45 minutes of physical activity with a follow up outdoor activity of 15-30 minutes of activity. The goals of the program help improve health, promote a sense of well being, develop sensory motor skills and enhance self and social awareness.

I would recommend this program to anyone to assist with maintaining a healthy lifestyle and feeling good through exercise.

The price for the program we tried out was 67$ and it is digital. You can check out their homeschool webpage to see the other programs available and the prices for them. There is even a program available to be used for a high school credit!

Disclaimer- We were not paid to do this review but were given the product in exchange for an honest review.