Animoves

Daphne ready for a workout.

Wriggly weight number one.

Recently I made the acquaintance of a little girl named Bo and her pet dragon. It's a show, an exercise program, for kids and their desperate mommies that miss sunshine. It's quite a workout with a wriggling twenty pound weight on each arm, running to help Bo make a magical door appear.

This show also possesses some real life applications. As we journey through our exercise adventure we choose an animal move, or animove, to help us rise to the challenge of finding the episode's make-believe creature. We can climb like a monkey, clap like a seal, stomp like an elephant, crawl like a critter, etc. We pretend a critter is a creature for the sake of the show's continuity. We select the appropriate move and follow the screen.

Coming into the kitchen after a 'Bo on the Go' workout I noticed little Bella sizing up the fruit bowl on the high counter. She, like Bo, chose an animove, climb like a monkey.  She began to exercise in place and then quickly scaled the kitchen counter, retrieved the banana and descended. Then she did a victory dance (a 'Bo boggie') and appreciated her accomplishment... or rather ate her banana. After three short episodes over the course of two days my daughter had incorporated an animove selection process into everyday life.

Wriggly weight number two.

Now I personally wouldn't watch the show if it didn't have my kids running circles like maniacs burning energy before bedtime and they do love every minute of it. The greatest benefit is not the exercise. It's not less frequent trips to the fruit bowl for me. It's the first few minutes on the show when Bo says those magical words, "let's clean up your Bo zone." Yes, please, let's! Cami and Bella set to work because Bo wants to make sure they have a clean place to run and play safely. They get everything off the floor in preparation. Cami gets a little carries away even... I've caught her more than once guiding her sisters up onto the couch and explaining to them how messy they make her floor. Granted her cleaning consists of one big pile of everything that she can move from one room, but it's good to vacuum under the lighter furniture frequently. It saves the lazy mommy in me a lot of bending over. We can work on sorting the pile in due course.

Cami reminds us all why we need exercise!!!