Early December 2025, Family Friendly Fitness kicked off at St Patrick's Reserve. It was a delightful way to end the year, with some movement and community!

St Patrick's Reserve is now under construction, so FFF is moving to other fenced playground around. Join the whatsapp group to find out what sessions are on where.

We just had a quick planning session and had the following thoughts:

• We will start our sessions at Duffield Reserve on Russell St, Rosewater because we will be able to do exercise within the fenced area. However, Duffield will be under construction for a couple months starting in January, so we will move to St Patricks or elsewhere for that time.
• The preliminary plan for kid wrangling is that we will plan for 45 minute exercise sessions, and on the day take 10-15 minute rotating shifts of focusing on the kids. That way hopefully everyone gets to do 30 minutes of exercise! Of course if there are older kids or other adults who want to come along and supervise the kids, that's great too. And we can just trial other options as we go!
• The types of exercises will be mostly stationary (and could potentially be done by whoever is looking after the kids) and won't require any equipment.
• For on the day communication we will set up a whatsapp group at the first session, the sole purpose of which is to check in about who is coming (through a poll) and any last minute changes on the day. This is because other project groups have found that Facebook is too unreliable for this.
• Our extreme hot weather policy can be to make it an aquarobics session at Lisa or Mad's place in Rosewater! We will just have to be flexible and creative along the way when it comes to weird weather, with last minute changes communicated via the whatsapp group.
• We'll kick off as soon as possible (when Lisa no longer has covid!) 
• Family Friendly Fitness sessions will be open to anyone. Our goal is to make it possible for local parents to do exercise whilst getting to know each other and build community in the process. We love the thought that we get to do something that is great for our wellbeing, whilst also contributing to the sense of connection and local relationships our kids experience.

Join the Facebook group to stay updated and join in on the conversations: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1172364290892204

At the session on Thursday October 30th, we explored what family friendly fitness sessions could look like. We agreed the sessions would have to be:

• Free
• Regular, perhaps on a few different days/times to facilitate as many people's schedules as possible
• 30-45 minutes long
• Body positive and accessible for all abilities, fitness levels, etc. and focused simply on movement (not body shape or weight loss)
• Open to bringing kids (how exactly, tbd!)
• Somewhere with a fenced playground/area for kids, potentially rotating between different places, and seasonally changing (outdoor/indoor)
• Non-equipment, with a variety of different exercises
• Contribute to building community and getting to know other local kids and parents
• Participation at your own risk
• Able to be done without a facilitator, for example by having a number of different 'programs' available that are easy to follow
• Potentially able to be done at home by yourself or online, if you can't make it out of the house!

The next steps for Family Friendly Fitness will be to bring together a project team to work out the finer details and do some planning, and to do an inventory of the best days & times for sessions!

If you have any additional considerations, worries, ideas, or thoughts - feel free to share them below in the comments  or join our Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1172364290892204

We would love some more people on board the project team to help with planning Family Friendly Fitness, please let us know below if you're keen for this! Joining the project team is not a permanent commitment, and your participation is completely dependent on your capacity at any given time. Anyone is welcome to jump in (and out), and contribute whenever they want to.

Getting active as a parent can be tough. In this Spark Session we explored free, local, body-positive fitness sessions where parents can move, stretch and look after themselves without needing to leave their kids behind. What could this look like? What sessions work? How could kids be part of it? How do we make it welcoming for every body?

Thursday October 30th
10am-11.30am
QT Neighbourhood Node, 67 Spring St Queenstown