At Valentines there is a lot of “heart” talk, so I thought it would be fun to come up with an exercise game to keep our hearts healthy. Throw the bean bag onto the board to see what exercise to do, then pick out a red card with the number of sit-ups to do. Then have fun performing that exercise. My kids love this game, not really knowing that it is “exercise”.

You will need some sort of stuffed heart. I made a heart bean bag. I like the bean bag because it is heavier than just stuffing and it stays put when thrown. I used a half sheet of red felt and cut 2 hearts out, about 4×4 inches. Next, I hot glued along 3/4 of the heart, stopped, filled the heart with beans, then I hot glued the rest of the heart together. You could also sew this heart together as well.

Now you need the playing board to throw the bean bag at. I used a white poster board piece. I divided it up into 9 squares, just with a red marker. Then I labeled each square with some sort of exercise by printing out pictures off the computer of that certain exercise. You could draw the exercise, but I am no artist. I like to have both the word and the picture on the board to help my kids learn the words too.

I also made some small numbered heart cards. I wrote 5, 10, 15, and 20 on these cards to tell how many of that certain exercise to do.

Now the kids are ready to get their hearts healthy.

Tagged as: exercise, Valentines

Written by Marie LeBaron

Marie LeBaron is the founder and managing editor of Make and Takes. Always having a love of crafts, she enjoys getting messy with glue and glitter. There’s always some sort of project going on, her kitchen counter is often cluttered with crafts. When she’s not crafting and creating with her kids, she loves to run, read, and blog! Read other posts by Marie