Summer is on our doorstep and waves of sunshine and warm weather wash over the neighborhood. Those familiar sounds of children playing outside come through the window, but where are your children? Are they in their rooms or in the living room, frozen in front of a glowing rectangle? It's time to rouse them out of the trance and challenge them to a water gun fight!
We all know that in general, children tend to be more sedentary and overweight these days. Our first lady has recognized this and led a campaign to improve our youth's diets and increase their activity levels. One of the best ways that you can encourage your children to be more active is to be active along with them. Challenge them to a water gun battle and invite the neighbor kids. If you participate along with them, I bet they will be excited about putting that game controller down.
In addition to the physical benefits, there are other benefits to activities like having water gun battles. Having water gun fights can help build confidence and leadership skills if they are well organized. Split up into teams and have your children take turns playing platoon leader, giving orders and motivating troops. This is a benefit that they don't get from watching television or playing video games.
Having large scale water battles like this also gives your children practice developing strategies and implementing them. They can practice planning and timing charges, using their resources of water wisely, doing flanking maneuvers, using decoys, and setting up ambushes from behind trees and sheds. Of course, as these battles unfold, things tend to not go as planned and there is a lot of improvising. Learning to react and make changes on the fly is also great practice too!
Years down the road, are your children going to reflect on the time they advanced to level three or four on their Play Station or Xbox, or are they going to remember the time they spent with their friends and family in a major water gun battle? If you need more water guns to make a water battle worthwhile, there are lots of different types of water guns available that can make for some interesting water battles. Now its time to get outside and have some fun. That goes for you too, get out from in front of this computer screen, grab your kids, and a squirt gun!.
