This quick PDF guide, 15 Simple Ways to Get Moving (also available in Spanish), from The National Center for Physical Development and Outdoor Play, offers easy outdoor activities to help children stay active. Each activity encourages children to stay active and engaged using only staff, the children, and a bit of imagination, making it simple to boost movement, exploration, and fun throughout the day.

The Centers for Disease Control and has created a 14 page PDF Go Out and Play! Kit for use in early learning programs as part of its "Learn the Signs, Act Early" Campaign. The kit coordinates developmental milestones with games and activities for preschool children. In addition to tips for making outdoor activities fun and educational, the kit includes information for caregivers/teachers to use and for parents to engage in at-home play.

Better Kid Care offers this two-page PDF version of Active Play for Rainy Days filled with fun suggestions to have children use their large muscles to run, jump, skip, climb, hop, ride a bike, swing, and slide is the best kind of indoor active play.

The Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (NAPSACC) project at the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention is now “Go NAPSACC.” Go NAPSACC features an interactive website. Look there for resources for children from birth-5 years, a focus on breastfeeding and infant feeding, screen time, and outdoor play. Go NAPSACC can be adapted for different child care settings, including family child care homes. 

The Go NAPSACC website, found at www.gonapsacc.org, gives technical assistance professionals self-assessments and tools. Follow Go NAPSACC on Facebook.

Go NAPSACC highlights how nature-based experiences support the whole child (PDF), offering practical ideas for integrating outdoor learning into everyday routines. This resource includes guidance on promoting children’s physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development through meaningful engagement with the natural world, as well as a one-page overview showing how outdoor play supports cognitive, sensory, social-emotional, language, literacy, communication, health, and physical development. 

A Spanish version is also available.

"When most adults think about exercise, they imagine working out in the gym, running on a treadmill, or lifting weights. But for kids, exercise means playing and being physically active. Kids exercise when they have gym class at school, during recess, at dance class or soccer practice, while riding bikes, or when playing tag." See Nemours Kids Health article Kids and Exercise to review the many benefits of exercise, the three elements of fitness, the problem with being sedentary, how much exercise is enough?, and how to raise fit kids.