For the past four years, Joseph and Esther Lee would usually wake up at 8am every Saturday morning to attend their Zumba session in a studio inside the Tampines Swimming Complex with about 40 people.

Yesterday, however, the couple got up an hour earlier for their Zumba session with a difference - this time with about 3,200 other people inside the National Stadium.

They were part of the Experience Sport Zumba session at the Sports Hub Community Play Day, which attracted 3,248 Zumba enthusiasts doing the dance sequences together.

Said Esther, 51: "It's so amazing in there dancing with everyone else. We love doing Zumba with a crowd like this to spread the Zumba love."

Such mass participation activities were a big reason why the Community Play Day - the second time the Sports Hub is hosting such an event - attracted a total of 16,000 yesterday.

Guest of Honour Tan Chuan-Jin, the Minister for Social and Family Development, was also in sports attire as he stressed the importance of keeping active and spending time together with families.

And there were a myriad of activities under the National Stadium dome to keep families happy.

Highlights included the Sports Hub Community Fun Stepper, where participants easily passed the one million step milestone, climbing 4 million steps by the end of the Community Play Day.

The Passion Children's Football Carnival saw Under-10 and Under-12 football tournaments on one section of the National Stadium pitch, while the Singapore Slingers were practising on a makeshift basketball court on the other side.

Next to the football tournaments, close to 300 kids of OCBC Cares beneficiaries such as the Down Syndrome Association and kidsREAD programme took part in sports clinics and tryouts.

Corporate training consultant Aradhana Srivastava, 38, showed up with her husband and two sons. While her sons tried out frisbee and other games in the Experience Sports Clinics and Tryouts, she got her Zumba workout in the morning.

She told The Sunday Times: "There are so many families here just laughing and having fun together. You don't want to do something like Zumba alone at home.

"When you do it in a big crowd there's so much enthusiasm and it's just so much fun here."

Retiree Abdul Ramah, 65, was happy to just soak in the atmosphere while his wife, Hadijah Hamsa, 60, took part in the Zumba session.

He said: "It's good for them to have these kind of festivals. I regret not bringing my grandson, he would have loved it. They should do these kinds of things more frequently."