May is National Bike Month. As the school year comes to a close and the warm weather has finally arrived in Virginia, homeschoolers across the state can turn their studies to outdoor activities such as biking.
1.1 Article: “5 Ways to Make Your Home Peaceful”
1.2 A Family That Bikes Together
1.3 Bikes, Trikes, Books, and Buying Guides
1.4 The Science and History of Cycling
1.5 The Science of Biking and Its Mark on History
How can we achieve the ever elusive state of peace in our homes? This article will give you five practical ways to pursue peace in your busy life. It expounds on giving thanks for the chaos makers, creating special clutter-free corners, establishing calm daily rituals, decluttering, and setting the tone. One way to create peace would be to declutter and then take the chaos makers out for a stress–relieving bike ride.
This resource from parents.com explains the benefits of family biking, how to buy the correct bike for your child, and how to make biking a pleasant experience for the entire family. A video on how to teach someone how to ride a bicycle is also available.
In order to keep biking an enjoyable activity for everyone, knowing the rules of the road is a must. The Virginia Department of Transportation has the biking laws for the state of Virginia on their website.
Allstate Insurance wants to ensure you have the information you need to keep your children safe while biking.
If your summer vacation takes you away from home, you can find the biking laws for each state at the Bike League website.
Trail Link has a searchable database for trails to explore throughout the United States.
The C&O Canal bike trail might be a bit of a challenge for the smaller bikers in your family. This guide will give you options for making, at least, part of it manageable for your family.
The Virginia Creeper Trail is another possible trail for family biking. It runs along an abandoned railroad bed in the western part of the state.
This preschool lesson plan about bicycles could help your preschooler learn the basics of biking.
You can make learning about bikes and bike safety fun with these activities for preschoolers.
Buying the right bike for your child’s size and developmental stage does not have to be difficult. You can use this guide to help you get the right bike.
Giving your child a love for bikes can be as simple as reading about bikes and the sport of biking together. This list of books about biking is a great start.
Bike Hub also has a list of books on bikes.
Bicycles are compound machines. You can teach your elementary students about simple machines and then challenge them to find all the simple machines used in a bicycle.
The history of the bicycle is fascinating. You can use this infographic to introduce your students to the significant events leading to today’s bike.
You and your children can explore this virtual museum exhibit on the science of cycling. You can investigate the wheels, drives and gears, frames and materials, braking and steering, aerodynamics, and human power involved in biking.
This lesson plan from the Canada Science and Technology Museum on Cycle-ology has three modules: history, science, and cycles in society. Each module has links to other resources, as well as downloadable worksheets.
Your kids might enjoy these projects for decorating their bikes. A bike parade for Memorial Day sounds like a fun neighborhood event.
Your high school student may enjoy this article by Explain That Stuff on the science of bicycles. It covers just about every aspect of cycling and has links for deeper study. It also has a challenging section on why it is so hard to fall off a bicycle and a link to the scientific study, Linearized dynamics equations for the balance and steer of a bicycle: a benchmark and review.
The history of the invention of the bicycle and its influence on history is fascinating. You can find out who invented the bicycle with this article.
In this article, you will find the industrial revolution’s influence on the invention of the bike. Be aware that there is a reference to the supposed evolution of the human species very early on in the article.
How did bicycles affect history? The article “Women on Wheels: The Bicycle and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s” explains the effect bicycles had on the suffragette movement.
How did the invention of the bicycle influence the push for flight? This excerpt from The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life by Margaret Guroff describes flight as the next natural step beyond cycling.
This question from the Kentucky Department of Education CATS assessment identifies a bike as a composite of simple machines and asks the student to describe where the simple machines are found on a bicycle and to describe how each is used to transfer energy. Answers are included in this downloadable resource.
Your high school student may enjoy this guide to bicycle maintenance. After all, if you are going to own equipment, you should know how to maintain it properly.
It’s as easy as riding a bike, or so they say! This video of the backwards brain bike experiment boggles the mind. Destin, from Smarter Everyday, was challenged to try riding a bike specially engineered to react oppositely from a standard bike. When you turn the handlebars to the right, the bike goes left, and vice versa. Can your brain simply adjust to this “small’ change, or does this really complicate matters? Watch this video to see how difficult it is to conquer this change.