Balance Bike Riding Ideas For Toddlers and Preschoolers

Are you finding it a challenge to discover new and fun activities that will help stimulate that boundless energy your little toddler or preschooler seems to have? Let’s face it, finding fun, exciting and super-healthy activities for kids is truly an art form. One that we happily share mastering alongside of you.

Our motivation here at ilovetoridemybike.com is to help you learn all about kids balance bikes.

That being said, it will come as no surprise that our not-so-secret weapon to providing a wonderful outlet for all of that energy doesn’t require a PhD or Google algorithm, it’s so simple that even a toddler or preschooler can give this a go.

Bike riding!

If your little energizer at home already has a balance bike, then we have some fun and simple balance bike riding ideas for you as parents to get out there and try with your kids.

In our post, Balance Bike Riding Ideas for Toddlers and Preschoolers our goal is to provide you with the following information and ideas;

• Our 1-10 list of super-fun balance bike riding ideas
• some helpful bike riding resources
• overall ilovetoridemybike.com conclusion

We now invite you to kick-back with your favorite means of hydration (we recommend a great brew of coffee of course) and enjoy our latest post, Balance Bike Riding Ideas for toddlers and preschoolers.

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10 Super-Fun Balance Bike Riding Ideas

1. Outdoor Bike Park

For those of you fortunate enough to live close to a bike park, these offer an amazing riding opportunity for your budding little rider.

Bike parks have been purposely built into public lands and some are even integrated with trail systems providing family-friendly recreation. Just like other purpose-built parks and/or outdoor recreation facilities, the benefits to the community are well documented. Including some amazing physical, social and emotional health benefits for users and communities across a lifetime.

Essentially, bike parks are for off-road and mountain biking. These have usually been built for older, more experienced riders. However, many are perfectly fine for toddlers and preschoolers to explore and are a great way to introduce your little rider to new terrains and new riding environments.

Bike parks really are great fun, healthy and challenging places for riders to explore. Many bike parks will include skills courses, pump tracks (circuits designed to be ridden by a rider’s momentum, instead of pedaling or pushing), jumps, trails and other fun features.

Our recommendation is that parents’ guide and encourage your child to gradually explore bike parks at a pace and progression that is right on-the-money and within their learning zone (ZPD).

Your little riding champion’s skills and confidence will skyrocket by having regular exposure to new, varied and challenging riding environments, such as a bike park, when they feel well-supported, safe and comfortable.

Some great balance bike options that are better suited for off-road terrain due to their unique features such as air tires, include the Banana Bike GT (USA), Schwinn 12″ Balance Bike (AUS), and the smarTrike 3-in-1 Balance to Pedal Bike.

To find bike parks in your local area, simply type bike park near me into your favorite search engine, such as google.

Here is a great example of what some communities have created for their future riding champions.

2. Outdoor Court Area

Outdoor courts provide wonderful, traffic free, enclosed spaces that offer some novel riding adventures for your kids.

Any outdoor sports court can be used to have some great fun on a balance bike. These include using basketball, netball, tennis, hockey, soccer or virtually any hard surface court that has painted line markings.

The enclosed areas are brilliant as they provide a traffic free environment that allows your kids to really enjoy riding without having to worry about additional traffic from other users, unless you are riding with your friends of course!

That being said, we absolutely recommend getting just one or several friends together and having a go at some activities provided in the resource below.

The addition of friends will not only enrich the learning experience for your child but help to keep them engaged and create a wonderful opportunity to nurture their social and emotional development, all while having a blast on a bike.

Some highly recommended balance bikes that are perfectly suited to hard-surface riding due to their design features such as EVA foam tires and lightweight design include the Strider 12 Sport (USA or AUS), GOMO (USA or AUS), Banana Bike LT (USA or AUS), and the Cruzee (AUS).

** Note: the attached activities below can be modified to work beautifully for toddlers and preschoolers, as they are essentially designed for school age kids.

So, grab yourself some cones or markers, some sports equipment, toys or whatever you have at home and be creative using these as a guide to some fun outdoor court riding activities. See VicRoads Bike Games & Activities – Teacher Supplement.

Once at the VicRoads website, click on Unit 1 (Years 1 to 2): Becoming a Bike Rider. Then click on the link for Bike Games and Activities – Teacher Supplement.

3. Balance Bike Treasure Hunt

A treasure hunt is all about looking for something (the treasure) and enjoying the journey finding it (the hunt).

Have you ever tried completing one using a bike? They are just super!

Not only does it encourage kids to be active, to explore and provide a fun and satisfying experience, but doing one on your bike adds a new level of excitement and adventure.

You can be as creative as you like with this, but if this is your first one, we recommend keeping this relatively simple. You can always add to your creative genius with your next balance bike treasure hunt edition.

To begin, we also recommend that you complete the treasure hunt in a play space that your child is familiar with, such as your local park, playgrounds, trails, bike paths and other areas in which they have ridden before. They don’t need to be riding too far, but exploring familiar areas that they have ridden before is perfect while hunting for their treasure at the end.

This will not only help you when making and hiding the clues but help your child to find this activity a little on-the-easy side. Remember, you can always make this more challenging as they become more familiar with the activity.

here is a link that provides some nice ideas for how to create a treasure hunt for children 3-6 years, then simply add a bike to the fun!

4. Wet & Wild Water Ride

On warmer, summer days this one will be a real winner.

If you have the space at home with a large grass area you can create a wet & wild water bike course for your little rider.

Using garden sprinklers and different backyard water toys, such as the Ozquatic Shark Sprinkler or the Inflatable Unicorn Water Sprinkler for example, you can create a super-fun water ride in your backyard.

If you have the space, simply spread the sprinklers and toys around the yard so that they can ride through these on their balance bike.

They will absolutely love this experience on their bikes!

As this activity is more likely to be done at home, a lightweight balance bike would be perfectly suited such as those mentioned earlier, including the Cruzee, Strider 12 Sport (USA or AUS) and GOMO (USA or AUS).

Another idea if you are fortunate enough to live by the beach is to take your kids balance bike riding on the sand and along the water’s edge.

Your kids will be mind-blown (in a wonderfully blissful way of course) as they most likely thought that going to the beach couldn’t get any better, until they got to ride their bike at the beach too!

5. Obstacle Course

Another idea is to create or utilize some fun play spaces where they can ride their balance bikes in a course format.

This doesn’t have to involve any special equipment, just some imagination and creativity will do the trick nicely here. We suggest using your local parks and riding routes and then simply asking your child to ride around certain objects or play equipment, trees, park benches and off road terrain and return to their starting position. For kids that like numbers, you can challenge them to complete the course as many times as possible in five minutes or see how long this takes them to complete one circuit of the obstacle course.

Then, for those competitive little riders, see if they can complete the course a little faster.

6. Ramps

Ramps or jumps can provide a great obstacle for riding a balance bike.

By utilizing some materials that you may have around the home, this can become a great building project for your little rider to help in designing and making with you.

The opportunities for the creative learning are endless and the amount of time, materials and quality of ramps will naturally depend on the age of your child.

For younger kids, we recommend starting with ramps rather than a jump, as this will be a safer option that provides the perfect progression for their learning and skills. It will lead perfectly into jumps as they develop greater confidence, strength and physical capabilities.

7. Park Tour Ride

As with many of our fun balance bike riding ideas, this option can be explored with or without their riding buddies.

If you are fortunate enough to have several local parks that your child just loves to explore and get rid of some of that boundless energy, what better way to get there than to ride your balance bike.

Personally, we are so lucky to have several great park options for our child to explore. Some of these are easily accessible by bike from home.

While others, we buggy or drive to depending on the weather conditions and/or the distance from home.

We suggest having your child ride some of the way to your local parks. For example, they may simply ride the safest and easiest shared pedestrian path that connects local playgrounds or other shared community facilities.

You can explain to your child that “we are going to complete a park tour today by riding our bikes to each one”. Basically, you are simply incorporating a short ride to each of their favorite parks.

This not only provides them with a great opportunity to realize that a bike is a wonderful form of active transport, but that a bike also allows you to commute around your local area easily, such as to your favorite park, your friend’s house or someday, to school while having fun on your bike.

8. Group Picnic Ride

This is a fun balance bike activity that will provide a great opportunity for your child to ride a bike and socialize with friends.

We suggest picking a great picnic location to finish your ride. This can be a new adventure, riding a short distance and exploring new terrain or simply riding your local routes and then taking the opportunity to have a yummy picnic with friends to finish.

Whether your child rides with others, or you simply meet a friend at your designated picnic location doesn’t matter.

This idea simply wishes to provide yet another opportunity for your riding champion to practice riding a bike, share the experience with friends and enjoy some great food and drink to nourish those growing bodies.

9. Gift Delivery Ride

This is one of our favorite balance bike activities because of the message and purpose behind it.

That is, this balance bike idea is all about others.

Quite simply, this activity is all about involving your child in giving a gift to a friend, family member, carer, teacher, community group, neighbor or even a stranger, and delivering this gift using their bike.

Again, the creativity is open for you and your child to consider what gift to give and who the recipient will be. Some great ideas may include making a thank-you card or cards for someone who has helped your child, a drawing or painting that your child made and giving this to a grandparent, a plant or flowers from the garden for your neighbor or making some cupcakes and delivering these to play-group teachers.

The opportunities are endless. So too will be the smile on people’s faces!

We then recommend turning your child’s balance bike into a delivery bike and having them personally deliver these gifts by riding their bikes. Again, this may be just a small distance that allows them to deliver their special gift on their newly created delivery bike.

There are many suitable balance bike baskets available that can be easily attached to bikes. The BINOTHINK Kids Bike Basket or MEGHNA Mini Bike Basket are just two examples of what’s available.

Kids will absolutely love converting their trusty bike into a delivery bike with purpose!

10. Indoor Court / Gym

At number ten, we want to provide you with a wet-day option.

Granted, not everyone will be lucky enough to have access to an indoor play area suitable for riding a balance bike.

However, for those that do have a purpose-built facility such as a school gym or community indoor center that is available to be used for bike riding, then this is a great option during the winter or simply when the weather is not so great.

For some ideas for riding skills and fun activities you can simply use our resource suggestion from No. 2 in our post, Outdoor Court Area and adopt these into an indoor area.

As with idea No. 2, once at the VicRoads website, click on Unit 1 (Years 1 to 2): Becoming a Bike Rider. Then click on the link for Bike Games and Activities – Teacher Supplement.

** Note: Cones or markers are needed for several of the suggested games.

Here is the link again for some great ideas for kids to practice riding in an indoor (or outdoor) court area.

Just remember, these games can be adopted for single riders of any age group.

Completing these on a balance bike or pedal bike works just as well. The goal is to provide unique, safe, fun opportunities for your child as they are learning to ride a bike, whether indoors or outdoors.

Bike Riding Resources

Here are a couple of websites that we think you may find helpful as your child is learning to ride a bike.

Although these websites offer a huge variety of resources and information for bike riding, some may not be relevant to you and your child’s riding abilities right now.

Just be aware that these resources provide information mainly on learning to ride a bike. However, we think that they will also give you a greater perspective of what can be adopted to your child’s riding right now.

In addition, we hope that in the future, these may be a valuable resource that you can pick and choose some great ideas to help nurture and inspire your child’s bike riding as they get older.

• Bicycle Networks Parents Place
• Learning to ride: VicRoads

Overall ilovetoridemybike.com Conclusion

Thank you for reading this far into our post Balance Bike Riding Ideas for Toddlers and Preschoolers.

Our goal was to provide you with some helpful, practical and super-fun activities that you can incorporate into your child’s learning to ride a balance bike.

We thank you for taking the time to learn more about how to have fun while teaching your child to safely ride a balance bike.

Let us know how you went with these riding activities; we would love to hear your feedback and comments.

If you have any questions about this post or anything to do with the world of balance bikes, please leave your questions or comments below.

Ride safe, have fun!