Yuvi – Story Aerobics for Kids (or how to feel less guilty about screen time)

Does your child have a favourite place or thing to do?

Belle does.

She has a particular corner of the sofa she likes to sit in, ideally with a blanket over her knees and a slice of chocolate chip brioche on a little plate. She likes to watch children’s programmes at the same time as playing on the iPad, designing her own candy floss or doing that thing where you warp your face to make it look like you are hugely fat.

It’s basically all kinds of wholesome.

She would happily sit like this for hours, if not days, on end if I let her, but then of course it would only be a matter of time before she wouldn’t need the fat app.

The trouble is that kids really enjoy technology – they love playing with gadgets and engaging with characters on screen. Fortunately this doesn’t mean they can’t be active at the same time.

Yuvi – Story Aerobics for Kids is a fun fitness app designed by David Juvan and Simon Zajc, both former professional athletes. David, who played competitive basketball for several years and Simon, a former martial arts competitor/trainer and a yoga enthusiast, combined their strengths with their high school classmate Gasper Stamac. Gasper used his experience in visual arts and multimedia to help develop the idea of a kids’ exercise program, using technology to reintroduce children to the joys of exercise and healthy living.

Yuvi

I have a real admiration for people who get an idea like this, who have a dream, and then actually turn it into a reality. It’s easy to be the person who says ‘it would be great to come up with a game that helped kids keep fit’ but it takes something special to be the one who says ‘come on then!’ and actually gets into a costume and starts exercising.  It’s very brave.

Yuvi The hero of the programme is Yuvi. Yuvi can only reach the goal of saving the toys, stolen by an evil wizard, if kids do the exercises with him. Throughout the journey of Yuvi kids not only happily exercise, but also learn valuable lessons of working towards a goal, the importance of teamwork and compassion.

Yuvi Story Aerobics

Sounds a bit too good to be true doesn’t it? It would certainly ease the parenting guilt if we could equate screen time with keeping fit. You can even join in yourself (unless you’d rather be candyfloss designing). Check out all ten episodes free on the Yuvi website here.

If you would like your kids to stay fit and healthy at the same time as enjoying technology then download the full or free version of Yuvi – Story Aerobics for Kids from iTunes now. You can also find Yuvi on Facebook.

Disclosure

 

Follow:

1 Comment

  1. barb
    15 November, 2013 / 1:32 pm

    Great app. My kids love the story and exercises. Best spent time on ipad for sure.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.