This Kindergarten Gym Program is Teaching Kids how to Ride Bikes
Riding gets kids off screens and inspires confidence.
What did you do in physical education when you were in kindergarten? If you were like many American kids, you played with a ball and ran around a lot. You probably didn’t learn how to ride a bike.
But thanks to All Kids Bike, a nonprofit with a mission to teach every child in the US to ride a bicycle in kindergarten, many children are doing just that. The nonprofits’ goal is to get kids off screens and engaged with other kids in healthy activities.
The nonprofit, launched in 2018, is led by the Strider Education Foundation and is running programs in over 800 schools in all 50 states. That’s 100,000 kids being reached every year, reported CBS News. The organization estimates that this will grow to more than half a million in just five years
Rolling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A surprise delivery of bicycles was made for the kindergarteners at Pittsburgh Minadeo PreK-5 in Squirrel Hill in late January 2023, reported WTAE-Pittsburgh Action News. The 24 bikes were donated by the engineering firm HDR’s foundation and All Kids Bike.
The HDR Foundation has given donations to 25 elementary schools, including two in Pittsburgh to reach kids that otherwise would never learn to ride. In fact, only one in four children in the US ever learn how to ride a bike.
“I think it is possibly the first time some of these kids will be introduced to bicycling,” Jim Carnahan, area manager for HDR told WTAE.
Cruising in Seattle, Washington
Another All Kids Bike Program that was funded by the HDR Foundation just began at Hawthorne Elementary school, according to a news release from the Seattle, Washington public school system.
“This is our opportunity to really expand our curriculum outside the walls of the classroom … And we really are excited to have this partnership,” superintendent Brent Jones said in the press release.
What’s unique about this program is that the school district is the only one in the country that will have a sustainable bike and pedestrian safety unit for students from kindergarten through the eighth grade.
“All of our kids … will have an opportunity to receive this programming by the end of next year, graciously funded now by the newly passed Washington state legislative transportation package advocated from the Governor’s office,” Lori S. Dunn, the program manager for Physical Education and Health Literacy in the district said.
This program will give kids the gift of riding a bike, even if the family cannot afford to buy one. But this is just one step in the right direction. Schools can help by providing a location for outgrown bikes to be donated to needy students and then all kids who want to ride to school will be able to roll.
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