Wake up kid! It’s time for 6-packs

“When we were young, there was enough space around the house to play. Now, spaces are shrinking, parents are over-anxious and seldom let their kids out to play on the road. Moreover, they are too busy to take kids out to a park to play,” says Dhanalaxsmi Srinivas, co-founder of Fun Factory, that provides regimented sports and fitness activities for young children.

Started a month and half ago by Dhanalaxmi and her husband Deepak Srinivas, Fun Factory is an Indian franchise of Jump Bunch Inc USA, a popular franchisor that has been providing kids in the US with a variety of fun physical activities, for years.
When the couple found that their child had very little scope for physical activity in the city, they figured that many parents here felt the same way. “For kids younger than eight years of age, there aren’t any structured activities available (no cricket or tennis academy admits that age-group),” says Dhanalakshmi. They were looking at venturing into the kids space and after considerable research they decided to start Fun Factory to provide young kids recreation facilities.

Fun Factory has now begun to collaborate with elementary schools across the city, making their programme a part of school curriculum. They also have regular activities at Gambolla, a kids activity centre in the city where parents can bring their kids is for some fun physical exercise. These activities are designed for toddlers (as young as 13 months) up to 12 years. Every week they take the kids through a new sport, which are at the moment essentially American.They follow a structured programme — they go through a warm up session, play the games and then also do a cool-down exercise.

“The equipments are imported from the US and are age-appropriate,” stresses Dhanalaxmi. They have trained coaches monitoring the activity, with music in the background and story-telling, role-playing (playing football like a robot), it’s exercise bolstered with huge doses of fun.

“These sports and games exposes kids to fitness early on. And with early introduction to diverse sports, research too has proven that there are higher chances of the child taking on some sport professionally in future,” she says. Further, these activities also enable development of multiple intelligences, soft skills like confidence and team work.

EuroKids, a pre-school chain setup a gym for toddlers, some time ago called Euro-gym. The gym was made a part of their curriculum because of the sedentary lifestyles that kids today lead. Sejal Kothari, centre director, Euro Kids International pre-school, Indiranagar says, “With both parents working in most families kids firstly, don’t eat healthy. Secondly, TV and video games are their prime sources of entertainment and physical activity takes a back seat.”

“Here kids are encouraged to crawl, jump through hoops and perform monitored exercises — all in a room with foam flooring (soft room). Therefore, there’s no scope for injury and kids get their dose of physical activity too,” says Kothari.  “This also helps build skills, aids muscular development and stimulates the mind.”

“Kids enjoy it and parents are also happy that their kids have a safe space for some form of physical activity,” says Kothari.
Another play-school, Apples and Cherries also has a weekly activity for kids. Anjum Khan, curriculum director of the school says, “Today, schools and parents are eager to get their kids on to some structured programme because parents have little time to engage their kids,” she says. “Plus they eat junk food, drink packaged fruit juices, and that increases the risk of child obesity and juvenile diabetes.” The school at the moment has some rhythmic activities for little kids.

“This stimulates the mind and body,” she says. The school is planning on adding yoga or some dance in their pre-school curriculum. Khan has worked with schools abroad for many years. There, she says, activities such as these for toddlers and kids is a routine in all schools. It’s only now that India is waking up to it.