I originally signed up for helping our head power skating instructor for teaching power skating and puckhandling (I am 20 and have played hockey for 17 of those 20) but I took on the responsibility of teaching a group of kids (ranging from about 4,5,6,7) who are just learning how to skate. I have one class a week with them for an hour and I've already had more than 5 sessions with them already. It is a 20 week program and honestly, I'm running out of different things to do with them.

Basically, what we work on is snow plow stops, tight turns, backwards skating, jumps, glides, all the very basics. Does anyone have any drills/activities/games that I can play with these little guys to help them improve while keeping them interested and having fun? I've tried google-ing this same topic and couldn't find any help. Thanks everyone.

Uhmmm basic skating. I remember a very very foggy childhood when I was taught to skate forward by "drawing a christmas tree with your skates on the ice". Of course that only works if you have lots of snow scrapings on the ice, or if you're out on natural ice with actual snow like I was.

One of the things to do on one of the very basic dutch tests is the "skating with speed between lines" thing where you first skate a quarter of the rink, stop, turn back, get to the boarding, then skate up to the half of the rink, stop, turn back and go to the boarding, then skate the full length to the other border, turn back and get back. Now for this you need good pushing off technique, good power (and balance, obviously, else you'll catch a toepick) and you need effective stopping techniques (as figure skaters we weren't allowed to do the hockey stop, boohoo, that's my best stop!) because otherwise you lose too much time on braking too far in advance - and it trains stamina, too.
The kids in in the class I was in were split up about this: about half hated the exercise because it made them pant for breath, the other half loved it cuz they could compete who would be first to finish the course. Maybe you can make it more interesting by promising something like balloons or something to the winner of 3 rounds or something. An instructor at my club promised a make-up box to the first figure skater who'd come out of the lesson with a dry butt - they were doing a practice session for a test, heavy on shoot-the-ducks - provided that person would indeed have their butt on their skate during their shoot-the-ducks. Don't remember if anyone won it, but the kids sure tried hard.

as for backwards skating, a lot of kids love the idea of being able to do it in itself i noticed but so many kids in my class hesitated to do it because they were afraid of crashing into something, so my instructor tackled this (which got especially nasty on the backwards spirals) by spreading us out over two lines and then saying 'go' every 4-5 counts or so (there'd be a line of 2-3 kids waiting for the go but the time you had to wait was pretty minimal in the end after all) Made a huge difference.

Oh yeah and I suspect the tradition at my figure skating club to make a large circle, grab eachother's arms and then do crossovers in a circle that way around the person whose birthday it is on the day of a training session or close to it - has something to do with stimulating the smaller kids to do crossovers like the older higher-level skaters do them.

Wow- none of the things you described are what I consider the "very" basics. To me the very basics are marching and swizzling, and not yet stopping. (I teach snowplow sam classes)

Some games the slightly older kids like to play:
Set up plastic bowling pins in a 10 pin arrangement. Skate as fast as you can towards them and stop in front of them. You get points for each pin you knock down, keep score with the lowest point total winning. (You don't want to knock them down).

Fox and the hens. In a hockey circle draw 2 perpendicular lanes that go through the center dot. The fox can only skate on these lines, and all the hens go around the circle. The fox tries to catch the hens along the line- quick hockey stopping right when he reaches the outer circle. As people are caught they become foxes- up to 2 foxes at a time.

For younger kids- the bubble gum song (bubble gum bubble gum in a dish...) then ask them how many pieces of gum they want, do that many wiggles/swizzles backwards "pop" the bubble and shrink (dip) as you come back into the starting circle.

For kids who can't do moving dips yet "elevator game" - 5th floor is standing up, basement is sitting on the ice, call a floor and move the elevator, making sure they bend at the knees.

Moving dips do a "car game". Driving motor cars (make noises) around the rink. Yell bridge and everyone does a dip, yell speed bump and everyone has to do a two foot hop.

5 monkeys jumping on the bed song- jumping along, fall to ground practice getting up.

Not sure how important posture is for hockey, but it's good for balance- put a beanie baby on their head and make them balance it there while they skate. Start with stroking, then make them do crossovers, 3-turns etc. Can also balance 2 beanie babies on their hands while they do this- it makes crossovers very challenging!

Good luck

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-Jessi
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Yeah, maybe its not the very basics, but it is very close. Some can skate backwards, some cant. Some can stop some can't, etc. So I have to work on the basic things like stopping and skating backwards...you get the picture.

But thanks a lot for providing games to play. I really appreciate it. If anyone has anymore, please feel free to post them.

Check out this thread for more ideas:

http://www.skatingforums.com/showthr...games+toddlers


The Search function can locate more relevant threads based on your keywords.

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Thank you.