When we were still living in Belgium, a friend got temporary access to the commissary outside of Brussels, and we went there and bought – among a lot of other things – bikes for the boys. We had not thought to buy bikes for the boys before, because not only were they not quite old enough, but also, children’s bikes in Belgium were quite pricey. At the commissary however, we were able to get the bikes for less. Soon after this, we learned that we were moving to Egypt; we packed up the bikes and brought them. Once here, it took us a long time to get used to the traffic, and there really wasn’t an obvious place where we could bike. In fact, biking anywhere seemed dangerous. The bikes were put away and forgotten about – until yesterday, that is. I had been thinking about it for a while, thinking that maybe we could try biking at the Victory College parking lot, and when I found yesterday to be such a lovely day, I borrowed some tools from our neighbor, gathered up the bikes, and put them together. I had to oil the chains, adjust the seats, pump up the tires, all of which took quite some time because Abraham insisted on “helping” the whole time, but eventually they were all set. I even found the helmets, tucked away in a closet.
It took the boys a little while to learn how to bike. They had to find their balance, and learn to peddle while steering. Starting especially seemed difficult. After half an hour or so, they had both got it, balance, turning and everything. I thought they might get bored after a while, but they kept biking around the lot for almost three hours. Only severe hunger drove them to agreeing to go home, and the entire way back, they kept asking if we could go back in the morning. It was nice to see them do so well. It made me miss living in a 'normal' place where they would have learned to bike earlier. I guess now that they started out a little older though, learning went much quicker.
The only problem now, is that Victory College isn’t always open, the streets still aren’t safe, and the boys want to bike ALL THE TIME.
Posts
1 comment:
I'm an instructor with the US national cycling organization (League of American Bicyclists).
Bicycling consists of the integration of the following 4 behaviors (in rough order of teaching/priority):
(1) balancing
(2) steering
(3) pedaling
(4) braking
To that end, the best way to teach cycling to kids is to progress through the behaviors as follows:
(1) balancing
(2) steering
(a) - lower the seat until the child can touch the ground with both feet flat.
(b) take off BOTH pedals (right and left side) - let the child scoot along the ground with their feet and work on balancing and steering (CAUTION - the right pedal is right hand threaded, the left hand pedal is left hand threaded (goes the opposite way). This is important - you might strip the pedals/cranks if done incorrectly.
Once the child has some facility with balancing and steering, put the pedals back on. Let the child become familiar with integrating the steering and balancing behaviors with pedaling and braking behaviors.
For more info, you can Google "teaching children to bicycle" or go to http://www.ibike.org/education/teaching-kids.htm
Hope this helps! My daughter and grandson live in Hurghada, will be visiting them in May.
Best of success!
Eric
Post a Comment