Pre-Skills for Bike Week Success

It’s important to emphasize that this program is built around the premise that children will learn the skills necessary to ”lose their training wheels”. This goal is obviously predicated on the assumption that children are skilled and comfortable with steering, pedaling and keeping their eyes forward. A few students learn all these things during Bike Week, but success is most likely when campers arrive with these fundamental pre-skills.

The nature of Bike Week necessitates that the child must be:

• Ambulatory
• Able to keep their feet on the pedals and maintain pedaling
• Able to keep their hands on the handlebars and turn
• Able to see sufficiently to avoid obstacles and maintain a path of travel
• Willing to follow instructions and motivated to learn to ride
• Under 220 pounds (weight restriction for our bikes)

Our experience has shown that behavioral considerations are extremely important—children may be physically able to ride, but if they cannot be persuaded to get on the bike and follow our instructions, they may not succeed. We have also found that children 8 and older tend to do better than younger children, but even more important is how motivated each child is to learn.

Bike Week is a big commitment on everyone’s part, and though our goal is to have fun, we take our commitment very seriously. Volunteers put in many hours and there is always a waiting list, so being on time is critical and attendance for the full week is mandatory.

If you or your child cannot commit to a full week of conscientious participation, please bypass this program for now and wait until you’re ready.

But, if you believe that the time is now, visit our For Parents page for more information and registration forms.