Kids Learning Balance on a Balance Bike
Balancing can be difficult for
younger children, and balance bikes area great way to help them develop
balancing skills. Once children learn balance skills on balance bikes, they
will be ready to confidently tackle 2-wheel bikes, and that will boost their
confidence. As an added bonus, the more confident children become, the faster
and better they learn new things.
Apart from helping to instil
confidence, balance bikes have other benefits for children as well. Just as
regular physical exercise is important for healthy adults, children also need
to exercise. Health and fitness studies have shown that children benefit from
undertaking exercise that raises their heart rate to 140 beats per minute at
least once a day. A great and fun way to do this is on balance bikes. Research
has shown that children who undertake regular exercise are much more likely to
continue doing so when they reach adulthood. The health benefits of exercise
for adults are well established, so helping children develop a positive
attitude to physical activity from a young age will be a great benefit to them
in the future. Parents who encourage their children to be physically active
will help those children develop excellent motor skills, and will help them be
open to learning new activities.
There is evidence to show that
children who are encouraged to develop their motor skills from the earliest age
tend to perform better academically as they grow older. Children who undertake
physical activity from infancy through to adolescence achieve high results
academically. Studies by the Swiss biologist and child psychologist, Dr. Jean Piaget,
have established that early motor and sensory intelligence provides a solid
foundation for the development of other social, physical and mental skills
later. In the simplest terms, this means that activities that help a child with
motor skills and sensory perception will help that child in trying to
understand the world in which he or she lives, and will also help him or her
develop emotional stability.
From a very early age, a child
starts to learn about the surrounding world by experimentation. The child feels
everything around it, and eventually begins to sit up, crawl, stand and finally
walk. Initially, all these skills will be difficult for the child, and
movements will not be very coherent. The child will fall many, many times.
Gradually, the child's skills improve, and so does posture and fluidity of
movement.
By the time the child undertakes the
first school exams at around age six, he or she will have mastered the art of
basic balance. It is likely that children who have more advanced motor skills
learn better simply because they can concentrate on what they are learning, and
do not have to devote any attention to coordinating their physical movements
and posture. As they advance in age, these features help them to improve
speech, language learning and good behavior. In later life, a good grounding in
these skills paves the way for developing higher precision motor skills such as
those used by pilots, surgeons, musicians and so on. Balance bikes are an
excellent way for children to learn balance and coordination skills, skills
that will help them throughout the rest of their lives.
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