Pre-schoolers at Townhouse Nursery in Alsager have been getting active with online Family Dance Fit workouts by health and wellbeing charity Everybody Leisure.

We all know how important it is to keep children active and healthy, but with the added pressures of home schooling and a national lockdown, children have once again been forced to spend more time than ever indoors at home.

As parents, we are very likely to be juggling working from home and multi-tasking with home schooling and with only being able to exercise outdoors in our local areas once a day, it is very likely that our children are being less active than ever before.

Research from Sport England suggests that before the pandemic children's activity levels were very low, with only 47% achieving the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day.

Coronavirus has meant this has decreased even further to only 20% during the last school closure period in Spring 2020.

To try and combat these issues, health and wellbeing charity Everybody Leisure, which operates the local leisure centres in Cheshire East has launched a new website Everybody@Home which hosts over 30 live fitness classes a week and on-demand fitness videos.

This January, Everybody has launched Family Dance Fit. It is an online fitness class with fun moves and music to keep the whole family active and moving, and local pre-school children from Townhouse Nursery got the chance to take part.

Alison Fisher, Townhouse Nursey manager, said: "Children's wellbeing is at the centre of everything we do at Townhouse.

"Part of our wellbeing focus is the importance of our children having access to a variety of physical activity throughout their day at nursery.

"The children thoroughly enjoyed the session from Everybody as they were introduced to lots of different exercise moves to some fabulous music.

"They were motivated by each other and the staff, as everyone followed the programme. It is a great addition to supporting our children's wellbeing especially through these difficult times that we are currently facing."

Jade Griffin, Senior Marketing Manager at Everybody Leisure, said: "It's really important for us to be engaging with as many people in Cheshire East during this lockdown, in particular families and young children; to try and get people moving and active.

"The Family Dance Fit class has been a fantastic addition to our online timetable this month and we were so pleased when Townhouse Nursery took part.

"It is fantastic to see early years settings taking health and wellbeing of their young people so seriously and we look forward to sharing more ideas and fun workouts and games with the children."

Everybody Leisure is offering all the online health and fitness workouts for free whilst the leisure centres are closed.

There's also some fun 10-minute family games and free wellbeing resources on their website.

More information on how to register to access the free workouts can be found here.