Geopalz

It's summer vacation here in Kansas City (yes, I know, we're early), and I've been looking for a way to keep my daughter active and outside all summer long. She gets a pretty decent workout playing outside at her summer camp, but it's never too early in my mind to get little ones in the habit of mindful exercise. 

I was recently contacted by the folks at Geopalz, who sent the little angel a sunflower Geopalz 3DTri-­‐AxisAccelerometer (fancy pedometer) so she could start logging her steps and earning prizes for doing so.

She's been using it now for about a week. So far, I've seen a lot of pros and cons, with the pros totally outweighing the cons. 

Cons:

• She wanted to wear her Geopalz on her waistband, but the clip is really, really, REALLY tight -- so tight I could barely get it on most days. This discouraged her from wanting to put it on until she put it on a ponytail holder and started wearing it around her wrist. Still not ideal, but wearing it!
• You get a point on the Geopalz site for every mile you walk, but you don't start to earn prizes until you've got 40 points. I find it's easier to motivate kids when they earn something right away, so if I were designing the program, I would've thrown them a bone at 5 points. 
• The 3DTri-­‐AxisAccelerometer is so fancy I found it too complicated. It's awesome in that it stores steps for 21 days, but even though they kindly sent me directions twice, I still thought it was pretty complicated and just started subtracting the previous days' number from the total when it somehow added everything together.

Pros:

• The site is adorable and easy to use. My girl loved it.
• The device is adorable. My girl has a sunflower, but they have a whole selection that looks to fit the style of just about any school-aged kid.
• My girl took immediately to the concept of tracking progress, which is a good skill to instill early in life. Kids who start seeing exercise as a "need to do" not a "nice to do" will have an easier time maintaining their weight later in life when they aren't burning 8,000 calories just running around being themselves.
• The family can use it together.
• Parents can add prizes from Amazon with a drag-and-drop feature that is super easy to use. I like that I can customize prizes if there's something in particular I'd like to bribe her with. (Right now there isn't, but that's clever.)

Would you use this? Do you have trouble getting your kids to exercise?

Comments

[JilL L]

All my kids are on the swim team (6, 8, and 12). They do some serious exercise 4 - 5 days a week so I don't see a real need for this. Perhaps it would be good for a kid that could use a little more motivation.

[Baby Hats]

Sounds like a fun device for kids that need a little motivation to exercise!