There are lots of ways to teach your child to ride a bike. There is the old training wheel method, which is scary for the kid and takes a fair amount of time.
I like the new balance bikes that are hitting the market. These have been around in Germany and other countries for years. These are wooden bikes, without pedals, that the little toddler walks on, then runs on. All the while, the child is learning to balance and uses gross motor as well as fine motor skills. There are several on the market, ranging from $80 to $300. I was hoping there would be a comparison on epinion, but no one has tackled this before.
My friends have something called The Skuut, which they bought for $80. Totally cute and their kids go over anything with this. They have a website, www.skuut.com which has online purchase.
Does anyone have experience with these types of bikes?
Does anyone else have The Skuut? Would you recommend it? My friends are like walking advertisements, but I want to get more than one opinion. (and I'm not paying $300 for a teaching toy).
Thanks

We have the Skuut and love it. They do sell for about 80.00 and you can get a good deal on shipping.

Skuut.com has the store listings.
We got ours from Country Moose Kids on the East Coast.

Balance bikes work, for sure. I believe the metal ones are much more durable than the wooden ones. We ended up getting the KinderBike model (www.mykinderbike.com) and my son loves it. I believe we paid $39 for it, though I'm not sure what they go for now. There are plenty on the market, so you shouldn't have to pay more than $50-$60 for a good one. Most seem to recommend them for children between 2-6, though I think if your child is tall for his/her age, they could probably start much younger. It depends on whether they can touch the ground. Cheers!

Looking at the dates of these posts I realize I'm a little late on this topic, but I can't help but stick my two cents in anyway. I've been looking into this very thing recently, and the product I'm purchasing is the Kettler Sprint run bike. It's a metal frame balance bike that has the nifty feature of covered spokes. They also come in at around $110, a price I can live with. They can be found at, www.runbikes.com or just search "Kettler run bikes".

i also was looking into a skuut, but if we get a balance bike i will probably go with a cheaper metal version. but why not just buy a normal bike, and remove the peddles?

Taking pedals off is not a good idea as the seat height on a normal bike is set up much higher than on the balance bikes which are lower making the childrens feet contact with the ground easy. UK Tesco.com are doing a great range of amazing value balance bikes, I have just bought the wooden Hudora Joey Balance bike which our son loves, they also have metal ones.

We are having trouble communicating with Skuut regarding our balance bike orders. Emails are not returned, no one answers the phone and messages are not returned. At this point we are very frustrated with the company because we, as well as many of our customers, have been waiting months to receive our order. We are not accepting new orders until this is resolved, and those with current orders have the option to cancel by calling 614-218-4002. Please have your order number handy to expedite the process. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and will do our best to keep our customers happy. http://www.sproutsoup.com/skuut-balance-bike-c-25-p-1-pr-72.html

The balance bikes for kids are great, my son and daughter both learned how to ride a two wheeler by using the mini glider, pink and blue! I looked at other balance bikes, but they were not of the same high quality. The mini glider and go glider bikes can take a beating, both bikes have been passed around the neighborhood. My kids love to glide, they are now using the go glider even though they ride traditional bikes. My kids learned to balance, without the fear of falling and without my assistance. We take these gliders everywhere, great for the beach, park and trails. My husband was so proud he posted a video!

Hi. We came upon this review of many of the popular bikes (after we already bought one unfortunately). It was quite accurate, atleast for the product we bought and I wish I had seen this before hand.

http://tview29.wordpress.com/