Family Resources - Healthy Futures

Healthy Futures is committed to helping you keep your kids and family moving! How to stay active while social distancing? Here are some ideas and helpful links:

For younger children: The Fall Healthy Futures Challenge is still on! We are working with registered elementary schools to ensure they can deliver the resources you need to participate from home. Check with your school to find out if they are signed up. Our monthly activity log is available for ALL children and parents. Whether or not your child is signed up for the Challenge, we encourage your family to use the log as a way to maintain a daily routine of physical exercise. Download an activity log to print and fill out by hand here, or an online fillable log here, a new Alternative log with other health indicators here, or a Word .doc log here.

What is the Healthy Futures Challenge?

Run through elementary schools across the state, the challenge encourages children to develop the habit of daily physical activity by asking them to keep track of their physical activity with an activity log. Children who log 60 minutes of activity at least 15 days of the month are rewarded with a small incentive. Each school participating in the challenge has a “challenge coordinator,” often the Physical Education teacher at the school. The coordinator is responsible for registering the school for the challenge, explaining the challenge and the importance of physical activity to their students, collecting the logs, reporting the log information to Healthy Futures staff, and distributing the incentives to students. We couldn’t do what we do without our amazing coordinators!

To see if your school is registered for the challenge, click here. Not registered and interested in getting your school involved? Talk to your school’s principal, PE teacher, or contact Healthy Futures staff.

Being Active as a Family

There are many things you can do as a family to be active! Have ideas beyond what we’ve listed here? Submit them in the suggestions box below!

Choose an idea from the Healthy Futures Activity Word Cloud.
Take a walk together every evening after dinner, or walk/bike to work/school together.
Go sledding.
Go for a bike ride or ski on one of Anchorage’s 250 miles of world class trails!
Make a goal to visit a new park once a week. Did you know Anchorage has over 220?!
Go for a hike!
Participate in a Healthy Futures sponsored event.
Include physical activity in family events such as birthday parties, picnics and vacations (red rover).
Don’t forget: Quality sleep is just as crucial as physical activity to overall health! Read more here.

Supporting Your Child in the Challenge

There are many things you can do to both help your child be more active and support them in completing their activity log. Below are some ideas. Have more ideas? We’d love to hear them! Submit them in the suggestions box at the bottom of the page!

Be a positive role model for your child’s activity–be active yourself! Include your child in your daily activity and/or complete your own activity log along with your child and keep it displayed at home.
Keep your child’s activity log in a prominent place in the house (eg. the refrigerator, next to their bedroom door), and create a routine for filling it out together daily.
Visit the links below with ideas for how to talk to your children about the importance of being physically active.
Healthy Futures supports events in the community encouraging physical activity, many of which are open to families and free. Check out our events calendar and attend an event with your child.

Community Resources

Resources for Talking to Your Child About Physical Activity and Advocating

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