Category: Exercise

Stay well

Sibo with fruit

I’ve come to the conclusion that we all probably just take our health for granted.  I know that the powers that be are always telling us to look after our bodies, but when we are feeling healthy it seems like a silly thing to have to worry about.

Until we get sick. Then it is a really big deal and we are sorry that we did not pay more attention.

Here are some of the things that you can do to look after your body.

After all… you only have one.

Eat less sugar. Sugar is bad for you on so many different levels. The worst thing is… they sneak it into all sorts of different types of food and you don’t even realise you are having sugar.

Like baked beans! Who would have dreamed that a tin of baked beans has sugar in it?

The problem with added sugars (like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup) is that they have no nutritional value at all and yet they contain a whole lot of calories.  This is why they are called “empty calories”.

Instead of grabbing chips or sweats eat healthy snacks like fruit and nuts. Try and drink water instead of carbonated drinks that are full of sugar.

Exercise is also a way to stay healthy.  For one thing – it reduces stress and anxiety. So next time you are going to write an exam or something, go for a walk or a bike ride (or you could hula hoop) before hand– it will make you feel calmer and more in control.

Exercise boosts creativity. Plus it helps you sleep better. Never mind that – it also makes you feel great and look good too.

A significant benefit of exercise is that it strengthens your heart.  This is very important. If your heart does not beat properly – it can cause all sorts of problems.

Exercise strengthens your bones. Means you won’t break them so easily and for those who have broken bones already – you know it is a huge pain in the butt and really inconvenient.

Exercise makes your brain work better – this means it makes you smarter! It can even make you a better reader.

They say that if you exercise 150 minutes a week it will add years to your life. That’s not so hard to do – is it? Just over 21 minutes a day.

So… all we have to do is eat less sugar and exercise to help our bodies stay healthy. Easy peasy!

Stay well

Sibo

New Year’s Resolutions

Sibo bed-head

Hi Everybody!

I hope that you all had a happy and peaceful festive season. I can’t believe that it’s almost time to go back to school.

I decided to make some New Year’s Resolutions – not too many because it is always hard to keep them. We usually start off with such good intentions and then get lazy or we just can’t be bothered. In fact, a few weeks into the year it seems like most or all of them have fallen by the wayside.

I decided to keep mine really simple as well.

I’ve written them out and stuck them up on the wall by my bed – so I can remember them each day.

  1. Smile at a stranger every single day. (More than one is even better.)
  2. Be grateful for all the lovely stuff that I have (even if I sometimes wish I had something else).
  3. Be nicer to Mum and Dad. (I can only have one hissy fit a week.)
  4. Make friends with kids who look lonely at school.
  5. Save as much water as I can. (Turn the tap off when I brush my teeth.)
  6. Remind Mum to recycle more. (Even if it means taking stuff out of the trash.)
  7. Ride my bike to school at least 3 times a week

See! They are not really hard ones – are they?  I should at least manage to do half of them.

The smiling stuff is really easy – and you know – people tend to smile back at you, which makes you feel good.

Number 6 might cause me to have some of my allotment of hissy fits with Mum. She gets fed up when I remind her to recycle – but I’m not ready to give up yet.

Number 7 might be a bit hard too, especially when it’s so hot. But the exercise is good for me and it saves my Mum petrol. Plus my friend Lizzie and I have great fun cycling to school. We are very careful because there are lots of hooligans driving around on the road who don’t always worry about bicycles.

They seem to think that we don’t have any right to be on the road – but we do.  Although some cyclists just cruise straight through stop signs or red robots – they don’t bother to adhere to the rules of the road or traffic signs.

That’s just silly.

Hope that 2016 is a great year for all of us.

Be happy

Sibo

A fun weekend activity

Sibo imagining her Dad on a bike

Many people would not really have known about the EcoMobility World Festival which is currently running in Sandton for the month of October if the catastrophe of the pedestrian bridge collapsing had not occurred.  That’s so very sad and my heart goes out to the family of those people who lost their lives and were injured.

The whole point of this festival is supposed to underline the fact that the Sandton area has simply become too congested. There’s not enough parking, too many cars are making the roads just nasty.

So certain roads have been closed down for the month and people have been encouraged to use public transport – like buses and the Gautrain. People have also been encouraged to ride to work on bicycles and indulge in a bit of exercise and walk or run to work or the shops.

Of course, you can imagine that there was lots of chaos the first few days. In fact, some people are still complaining. Others are having fun and enjoying the opportunity to be able to cycle easily around the place.

Tucked away in a little nookie – a spot run by @ColouredCube, is a pop-up museum that brings to life “Our History of Transport”.

If you come on the Gautrain, at the top of the stairs (after the turnstiles) you turn left into West Street, follow the green stop signs and look for the white tent entrance on the left. Go passed the test track through a gate to the little grey building that says “Our History of Transport”.

This is uniquely activated as an interactive multi-sensory exhibition – the transit time-line traverses key turning points in our history, examines our current situation and shares exciting news about future transport possibilities.

It’s a moving exhibition and includes cool stuff like life-size vehicles, audio visual materials, storytelling and game playing. This means… it’s something for everybody!

My friend Ginny is going to be reading Sibo Likes Life in that very spot on Saturday 24th October whilst she hula hoops using a huge hoop. She has the 15h30 story telling slot, but this particular expo is open from 10h00 to 19h00 on weekends with guided tours at 10h30, 14h30 and 16h30.

If you want to find out more information you could call 082 4503356.

For more information about the EcoMobility Festival.

Come visit and have some fun.

See you there,

Sibo

Cool word of the week: traverse
Meaning: Crosses, navigates
Example: Big ships traverse the ocean.

Fun visit to the zoo

Sibo at the zoo

Last Sunday we went to the Zoo – right in the centre of Pretoria. What a fun day it was too!

We got up nice and early and took our dog for a walk first. Then we had breakfast so that our tummies were full and we had lots of energy. We drove – but you can also take the Gautrain and get off at Pretoria station and then you can get a bus that drops you off right outside the zoo.

It costs R55.00 for kids and R85.00 for adults. It’s really good value for money because you can stay there all day. If you are clever you can take a picnic with you – there are lots of grassy places where you can sit and have a snack or a meal when you are tired of walking and looking at all the animals. You can even braai.

It’s a good idea to wear comfy shoes because it’s huge. Huger than huge in fact. Sometimes I feel sad to see all those wild animals stuck in cages, but mostly the cages are big and the animals don’t look unhappy. It’s not like one of those awful places when the poor creatures sit in little concrete boxes and they hardly have space to move.

The National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria is  an awesome place. It’s also a bit like a science centre because there are notice boards that give you all sorts of different information about the animals, like where they come from and what they eat.

We took the cable car and zoomed right up to the top of the hill. Sjoe! But it was high and I was a bit scared. It was amazing to look down on all the animals.

The lions and the tigers were magnificent. I was very glad that there are big fences because I swear that one of the tigers thought I looked like a tasty little snack.

We saw all sorts of animals, birds and reptiles – kangaroos, giraffes, hippos, a rhino, lots of different types of buck, monkeys, apes, baboons, snakes, crocodiles, lizards and many brilliant birds with different colours. There were zebra, leopards and elephants too. My favourite was the bear. He looked all big and cuddly. He just wallowed – half in and half out of his water pool and watched all the visitors. Just like the people were in the zoo – instead of him.

Oh! Wait! Silly me – we were in the zoo too, weren’t we?

Tell your parental agents you want to go to the zoo – for a family outing, a school outing or for your next birthday. It’s such fun.

Until next week!

Sibo

Healthy Snacks

Sibo with fruitFeh! I was always under the impression that being a kid meant we could gobble up as much junk food as we like… chips, sweets and cakes.

But I was reading the other day how easy it is to get addicted to junk food. And if you get addicted when you are a kid, it’s harder to kick the habit when you get older.

Worse – all the negative side effects were a bit shocking too. Who would have thought that eating too much junk food can cause tiredness and weakness? Seriously.

It’s so easy to grab a packet of something junky when you are hungry and chomp it down – but the problem is, a short while later you are usually hungry again. And so you grab another packet of something… and another and another.

So what could we eat for healthy snacks?

Yoghurt is a good one. It’s easy to pack in a lunch box and it’s full of vitamins too.

Another healthy snack is nuts – although preferably they should be unsalted.

Stuff like celery or carrot sticks is also good – you know what mums always say… eat up your carrots – they are good for your eyesight!  Raw slices of peppers – red, green or yellow are yummy too. Did you know that a pepper has more vitamin C (the stuff you need when it’s winter and you don’t want to get a cold or the flu) than an orange. Sjoe! I was quite surprised when I found that out.

Of course oranges are good – although sometimes they are a bit sticky and messy to eat at school. All fruits are good snacks – but one fruit that is really easy to eat and full of goodness is a banana.  They are also an instant energy boost because they are full of sugars like sucrose, fructose and glucose. They have lots of iron in them – which is great because many children in South Africa suffer from anaemia (iron shortage) and eating bananas is an excellent way of fixing this. Plus the potassium in bananas promotes healthy bones – which, as growing kids, we need.

Don’t drink too many sodas either – water is better!

……………………..

Word for the week: Acne

Meaning: a skin condition characterized by red pimples on the skin, especially on the face, due to inflamed or infected sebaceous glands.

Example: She rubbed the peel (the inside bit) of a banana skin on her face each night to help improve her acne. (This is a true tip – try it out.)

Hula hooping is fun

Sibo hula hoopingDon’t know if you’ve heard this, but they say that we use more of our brains when we are sleeping than we do when we watch television.

Eish! That’s a scary thought. We all know how much kids like to watch television. We’d probably sit and watch it all day if we got half a chance. My mum is quite strict. I’m only allowed to watch TV for an hour every day. So I have to pick my programmes carefully.

Often our parental agents tell us to go outside and run around. Like we were dogs or something?

Of course, if you have dog – you should go outside and spend time playing with it – throwing sticks or a ball, or taking it for a walk. I hope that your dog is allowed inside too – those people who think that dogs should be left outside, no matter what the weather, make me very sad. I don’t even want to even imagine how the poor dogs feel.

Sometimes people forget – they have lots of things to do, TV’s to watch, jobs or school to go to, families to talk to… but a dogs’ whole life revolves around his owner. Dogs are family too. Sadly, people tend to forget this.

Back to exercise… I got a hula hoop for a present and I’m having such fun with it – I don’t even mind when mum tells me to go outside and get some exercise. Some of my friends also have hula hoops – and so we all play in the garden together. We put some music on and have great fun.

To begin with it was quite hard to keep the hoop spinning around my waist – but I’ve got the hang of it now. It’s actually quite easy. I googled hula hooping and I see that there are some sites where you can learn cool tricks.

I think that my mum might quite like to do it too. I read that it’s great exercise. And you know how mums are – always trying to lose weight. Only thing is – she needs a bigger hoop than the one that I have.

Luckily my friend Ginny knows how to make these hoops. If you want to know you can contact her.

……………………..

Cool word for the week: Dank

Meaning: Unpleasantly moist or humid; damp and, often, chilly.

Example: I feel sad because the poor dog across the street has to sleep in a dank shed and is never allowed inside.