BIKE BLING!

While the extra snow might slow you down, this just means that you have more time to prepare your bike for its grand debut! Make your bike into a dazzling work of art so you can ride with style, and maybe even explore one of the city’s newly expanded bike paths!

Brought to you by our friends over at the Marbles Kids Museum!

Materials

• Coloured Straws
• Pipe Cleaners
• Ribbon
• Construction Paper
• String
• Scissors
• Markers
• Hole Punch

Directions:

• Start with the wheels of your bike! You can use straws to turn your regular-old-spokes into colourful spinning wheels!
• Open your scissors and place them inside the straw. Carefully cut a slit down one entire side of the straw. Open your straw up and attach it to one of the spokes of your wheel. Continue until your wheels are filled with colour.
• Now, we’ll move on to the handlebars! Bend your pipe cleaner so that it forms a circle which can fit snugly over your handlebar. Twist the ends of the pipe cleaner together so that your circle holds its shape.
• Choose your favourite colours of ribbon and tie them around the pipe cleaner. Once your pipe cleaner circle is completely covered, attach it on to your handlebars. Repeat these steps to decorate your other handlebar as well!
• Decorate the front of your bike! What would you like to display proudly on the front? An animal? A symbol? Create your design using markers and construction paper. Once you’re done, cut it out, and use a hole punch to make a hole near the top (if you don’t have a hole punch, carefully use the scissors to create a hole). Thread the string through the hole and use it to attach your creation to the front of your bike.
• Now your bike is ready for anything! Be sure to grab your helmet and review important bike safety tips before heading outside!

If you don’t have a bike…

• There’s no reason you can’t bedazzle something else! Almost anything looks better with a little bling! Explore your home together and choose something to decorate!

How does this spark creative learning?

Kindergarten: Explore colour as your child decorates their bike! Ask them to identify the colours of the different materials they are using. Sort them into different piles by colour before you get started working. Within those piles are there colours that are lighter than other ones? Darker? Brighter? Be sure to keep your eye out for the same, or different colours, as you adventure outside!

Grade 1: Use the different colours of straws and ribbon to make beautiful patterns as you decorate your bike! Each colour is a different element in the pattern. How many elements can you include in your pattern? How many times does your pattern repeat?

Grade 2: Put on your thinking caps as you create patterns together! Using the coloured straws and ribbons, create the beginning of a pattern on the bike, and challenge your little one to complete it! Later, turn the tides as you ask your child to create the beginning of a pattern which you then have to complete!

Grade 3: Riding your bike is only one great way to get in some daily physical activity – there are many more! As you decorate your bike, brainstorm a list of exercises and physical activities that help strengthen your heart, arms, legs, and abdomen, and make a list. Try and think of one item per decoration on your bike. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a list of activities that is miles long!

Grade 4: Do you have straws that are all different colours of the rainbow? What about construction paper? Using either straws or construction paper, turn your plain old wheels into complete colour wheels! With all the colours of the rainbow represented, what happens when you spin your wheels really quickly?

Grade 5: Did you know that your bike is a simple machine? As you decorate your bike, look at the different types of simple machines, and see if you can determine which one your bike is an example of. Investigate your bike to see if you can identify all the different parts that make it work, how we apply forces to these parts, and how your bike changes the way forces are applied to make your life easier!

Stay tuned for more resources to help spark kids’ creative learning!

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