Monday, April 24, 2017
Frost Middle School Bike to School Event a Success
Last week FABB member Alan Young helped with a Bike to School event at the Robert Frost Middle School in Fairfax. The April 21st bike to school event was the school’s first, and Alan worked with Sally Smallwood, the Fairfax County Public Schools Safe Routes to School Coordinator, to provide help on maintenance and safety checks. Fourteen riders participated, had fun, and benefited greatly from the advice shared by Alan.
Many thanks to Alan and Sally for all of their work in helping Fairfax children bike safely as part of a healthy and active lifestyle.
If you have participated in or know of similar bike to school or other Bike Month events, please share your stories by sending them to steve@fabb-bikes.org.
Labels: bike to school, Robert Frost Middle School, sally smallwood
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Vienna Bike/Walk Challenge - Final results
Day 5 is in the books of Vienna's Bike/Walk Challenge Week. Over 5400 kids walked or biked to school all week. The Overall Challenge Cup goes to first timer Westbriar ES with a bang up job on the last day of the 5 day challenge - with 178 kids walking or biking to school. |
| Vienna ES bike racks with 186 bikes! |
The coffee shops were a buzz as it's customers were wondering out loud if they took a wrong turn and ended up in Portland. Kudos to the teachers who took time out of their morning planning to greet kids at various meet up points and ride in.
The third spot was taken up by Wolftrap, the only school that participated in all six years for the entire week. Wolftrap with it's bike train culture ran one that passed through the Old Courthouse Road S-Curve, which is on the County's list of projects to create safer bike conditions. A second bike train was run from within the Town of Vienna limits. We've heard that the parents will make that bike train a weekly event for the rest of the year. In addition, those kids had a great time delivering bike safety tips and the weather with ABC7 on National Bike to School Day.
Here is the link for that: EILEEN BIKE TO SCHOOL
View on www.youtube.com
Louise Archer, with notoriously difficult walking routes, has spent the last two years working with parents to encourage more walking. It's rumored that a bus stop was eliminated as a direct result of this week long Challenge. A group of Louise Archer students who attend that school's AAP center, but whose base school is Vienna, organized a bike train originating at Vienna Elementary School. How's that for leveraging how schools can work together? With that kind of effort, Louise Archer also set a new week-long high of bikes to school.
Cunningham Park also had a slight down year but the ever popular Casey the Cardinal, their giant red mascot, greeted walkers and bikers with 'free high fives'. Even commuters on the way to work on Park St. were excited to see Casey. Any ideas on who is inside?
The week is a lot of fun and huge thanks go out to the students who love it and have fun, parents who see just how important walking and biking to school is, and the school's principals, staff and teachers who get the direct benefit - kids ready to learn all week long. We'd also like to thank the Vienna Business Association for recruiting 30 businesses to donate a percentage of week long sales to the seven schools. Community involvement is always important.
Keep up the momentum kids. Great job on showing how to get to 'your' workplace for the adults who will join Bike to Work Day on Friday, May 16. We look forward to the 7th version of the Challenge next year, tentatively scheduled for May 4th-8th.
More photos from the Challenge:
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| Wolftrap ES |
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| Westbriar ES |
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| Westbriar ES |
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| Louise Archer ES |
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| Vienna ES bike train |
Labels: bike to school, bike to school day, bike train, vienna bike/walk challenge
Saturday, October 5, 2013
They'd rather RIDE to school
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| Photo: Washington Post |
What has two wheels, runs on human energy and is red, pink, blue or any color in the rainbow? A bicycle.
You may have noticed that in recent years, the number of people who bike in and around the city has increased. More people bike to work, to the grocery store, to pick up their laundry or to go to the movies. There are more bike lanes, bike signs, bike shops and there is even a popular bike idea, Capital Bikeshare, that allows people to rent red bikes to get from place to place.
And the trend is not limited to adults. Kids are getting in gear, too.
“In the winter we walk, and the rest of the seasons we ride our bikes,” Olivia Steckler, 8, said one morning outside Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, a public school in Northeast Washington where she’s a third-grader. She was wearing a bright yellow vest (so that people can see her when she’s biking), her bike lock key on a string around her neck, and a pink and purple helmet. She stood next to her purple and teal flowered bike, which featured a bell on the handlebar.
“It makes me feel happy,” she said about biking. It takes her brother Ben, 5, and her about 15 minutes to ride from home to school with their babysitter.
“I don’t try to get distracted, but I like to think about how [riding a bike] makes me feel — sort of like I’m flying because my feet are off the ground,” she said.
I'm sure there will be many kids biking to school on International Walk to School Day on October 9.
You may have noticed that in recent years, the number of people who bike in and around the city has increased. More people bike to work, to the grocery store, to pick up their laundry or to go to the movies. There are more bike lanes, bike signs, bike shops and there is even a popular bike idea, Capital Bikeshare, that allows people to rent red bikes to get from place to place.
And the trend is not limited to adults. Kids are getting in gear, too.
“In the winter we walk, and the rest of the seasons we ride our bikes,” Olivia Steckler, 8, said one morning outside Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, a public school in Northeast Washington where she’s a third-grader. She was wearing a bright yellow vest (so that people can see her when she’s biking), her bike lock key on a string around her neck, and a pink and purple helmet. She stood next to her purple and teal flowered bike, which featured a bell on the handlebar.
“It makes me feel happy,” she said about biking. It takes her brother Ben, 5, and her about 15 minutes to ride from home to school with their babysitter.
“I don’t try to get distracted, but I like to think about how [riding a bike] makes me feel — sort of like I’m flying because my feet are off the ground,” she said.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Kids who bike or walk to school concentrate better
The survey looked at nearly 20,000 Danish kids between the ages of 5 and 19. It found that kids who cycled or walked to school, rather than traveling by car or public transportation, performed measurably better on tasks demanding concentration, such as solving puzzles, and that the effects lasted for up to four hours after they got to school.
The study was part of "Mass Experiment 2012," a Danish project that looked at the links between concentration, diet, and exercise.
Niels Egelund of Aarhus University in Denmark, who conducted the research, told AFP that he was surprised that the effect of exercise was greater than that of diet:
The study was part of "Mass Experiment 2012," a Danish project that looked at the links between concentration, diet, and exercise.
Niels Egelund of Aarhus University in Denmark, who conducted the research, told AFP that he was surprised that the effect of exercise was greater than that of diet:
"The results showed that having breakfast and lunch has an impact, but not very much compared to having exercised," Egelund told AFP.
"As a third-grade pupil, if you exercise and bike to school, your ability to concentrate increases to the equivalent of someone half a year further in their studies," he added.
The process of getting yourself from point A to point B has cognitive effects that researchers do not yet fully understand. I wrote last year about Bruce Appleyard’s examination of cognitive mapping, in which he compared children who were driven everywhere with those who were free to navigate their neighborhoods on their own. His work revealed that the kids whose parents chauffeured them had a much poorer comprehension of the geography of the places they lived, and also a less fine-grained knowledge of the landscape around them."As a third-grade pupil, if you exercise and bike to school, your ability to concentrate increases to the equivalent of someone half a year further in their studies," he added.
Labels: bike to school
