Kinderfeets Balance Board

Endless possibilities for fun and entertainment.

When your child's Kinderfeets Balance Board arrives, their imagination will take over. It can easily become a seesaw, a balance board, a slide, a step stool, a boat, a resting place, a doll bed, a puppet stage, a tunnel and so much more to explore! The possibilities are truly endless - and completely up to your child.

This beautiful multi-use piece was originally used in Walforf early childhood education classrooms. It was created to help children develop a sense of balance, stimulate their vestibular system and gain a sense of awareness of their body and body parts.

The Kinderfeets Balance Board is Dutch-designed and made to mimic the exact same intentions as the original - it's excellent for stimulating physical and mental child development. The Kinderboard can be used both indoors and out, perfect for rainy and sunny days at home or school. Open-ended play opportunities for toddlers, children, teens and adults are endless! 

Holds up to 220 kg, so it’s guaranteed fun for the big kids (or kids at heart), too!

Available in: Bamboo, Black, Chalkboard, Mustard, Natural, Rainbow, Rose, Walnut, and Whitewash

• Great balance board
• Wobble board fun for the whole family
• Holds up to 220 kg
• Awesome for open-ended play
• Waldorf-inspired
• Excellent for stimulating physical and mental child development

PLEASE NOTE: this item will take an extra 1-2 days to dispatch from our standard dispatch time.

Kinderfeets™ is the product of award-winning designer and Netherlands native, Oscar Mulder. Having grown up in the Netherlands, where bicycling is a way of life, Oscar wanted to share this with his then two-year old son, Sebastiaan, in their life in San Francisco.

Oscar searched for the perfect push bike to fit Sebastiaan’s needs, but couldn’t find exactly what he was looking for. The great-grandson of a Dutch bike designer, and a designer by trade, Oscar pursued the challenge himself and created a prototype.

Once he and his son began cruising around their neighbourhood, neighbours starting asking questions about the small push bike and urging Oscar to pursue the creation as a full-fledged business. Kinderfeets was born soon after.

Inspired by traditional Dutch bikes, Kinderfeets is a play on words for the Dutch word “kinderfiets” which translates to “child’s bike.”

Kinderfeets is a small training bike with a low step-through frame without pedals that allow children’s feet to touch the ground–it’s the best way to prepare them for learning to ride a full-sized bike.

The innovative foot pegs Oscar added serve as comfort tools to familiarise children with how and where their feet will be placed when they graduate to a full bike; the pegs ultimately allow them to find their balance, comfortable speed and prepare them for pedals. The bike’s adjustable saddle allows for flexibility and complete comfort.

When Oscar’s twins were born 5 years later, he decided to develop a new push bike to add to the collection; the Kinderfeets Tiny Tot is designed to get little ones riding as early as one year.

Kinderfeets encourages children to live an active, adventurous lifestyle along side their parents. The award-winning quality push bike models are eco-friendly and feature a whimsical, patented design. The wooden frames are handmade and the bikes come in a variety of chalk-board finishes.

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Kinderfeets' Environmental Philosophy:

There is a Native American proverb that cautions us to “treat the Earth well … we are borrowing it from our children.” Kinderfeets set out, they wanted to make an investment in their children’s future.
 
Their balance bikes are made from sustainable birch wood, from a replenishable source. The airless tires are completely biodegradable. They use minimal packaging material made from recycled paper and water based-ink. The chalkboard finish paint (not available on Tiny Tot) is water-based and the lacquer is non-toxic. And with Trees for the Future, Kinderfeets plants a tree for every bike we sell.
 
Their efforts recently earned the Toy Man® Eco-Recognition Seal, but it's our children’s children who will benefit from from their environmentally conscious efforts. 

Kinderboards look deceptively simple. Developed for use in Waldorf early childhood classrooms they're a simple but rather clever concept for developing a child's balance, stimulating their vestibular system and helping them gain a deeper awareness of their body and body parts. However, as is often the case with many of the world's most enduring toys things are never quite what they seem.

A Kinderboard's hidden cost and complexity begins with the raw material used in its manufacture. Each board is made using Beech plywood; a heavier, denser timber than other cheaper options. This ensures it’s both strong and durable and thus will endure plenty of energetic play. The timber used is also FSC certified. This means it’s often more expensive than untraceable non-sustainability harvested alternatives.

Before a board can be shaped its plywood must first be manufactured. This process involves kiln drying the raw timber until its moisture content falls below 2%. Thin timber veneer sheets are then cut from each log. These are carefully layered and glued by hand to form a plywood panel. Rectangular shapes cut from each panel then begin the journey that results in a finished Kinderboard.

Creating their elegant shape is the first step. Super-heated steam is used to soften the raw plank at a temperature of more than 130°C. The plank is then carefully bent using a custom built shaping form. The form holds the plank under tension until the softened wood cools and hardens into its final curve. It almost an hour to bend and set each board. This process involves expensive industrial steam presses that make only one board at a time. This obviously limits the number of boards you can make in a day. Furthermore, not all planks survive the shaping process and must be discarded.

Raw planks that made through the shaping process are then sanded and shaped by hand to ensure a smooth and elegant finish. This includes the addition of each board’s deceptively simple corner curves. Adding these finishing touches is a surprisingly time-consuming task.

The completed Kinderboard is then stained and lacquered. This involves up to four coats per board. Each coat is applied by hand and then hand sanded before the next is applied. Kinderfeets uses ecologically friendly stains and lacquers. These are more expensive than solvent-based alternatives.

A final quality review identifies and removes any boards which have developed significant cosmetic blemishes before packing and export. There are then additional costs associated with testing it to Australian standards, EU standards and US standards and importing this relatively bulky toy and distributing it nationwide.