Bicycles are tamed at youth bike rodeo

On October 12, nearly two hundred students took part in a bike rodeo at Anne Darling Elementary School, where they learned how to ride their bikes safely by participating in four bicycling courses. Over a dozen volunteers helped teach students how to make right turns, left turns, exit out of a driveway, scan and look over their shoulder, and properly fit a helmet. All of this is part of the month-long Walk and Bike to School program in which hundreds of students at this school are participating.

In addition to the fun bike rodeo that took place last week, every Wednesday of the month students and parents have been arriving to school in walking school buses. The walking school buses not only help increase pedestrian awareness and safety around schools, but they also encourage students and parents to choose walking or bicycling as fun and active way of getting to school.

We all know there are many more benefits to walking and bicycling, and this is exactly what fourth and fifth graders are learning. Nearly two hundred students are tracking the way they get to school each day during the month of October. Students are keeping a walking and biking journal in which they will tally the number of active miles they traveled during the month. This journal will also help them calculate the number of pounds of carbon dioxide they have kept out of the atmosphere by not being driven to school. We’ll report back to you once we have all the results.

Special thanks to all the volunteers that helped make the bike rodeo happen (so early).