Hi, our learn to skate lessons start again next Saturday and I will be assisting as usual. I was wondering if anyone had any advice as to how to keep a child entertained if they are bored of working on an element and the teacher isnt ready to move on yet. How can I make it more fun for the child to do it?

I usually assist the tots

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2010 Skating Goals

1) Land Double Axel
2) Pass Junior Moves at the end of January
3) Pass Novice Free at the end of January
4) Pass Senior moves by september
5) Consistant double flips and double lutzs
6) Learn a new cool spin!

What age and what level? Different idea for 3 year olds vs 13 year olds

It depends on the age of the kids. If it's tots, it's important to play games or to just get them to continue to try. If it's older kids, they can continue to practice the element. When I have older kids working on 3-turns and mohawks, I expect that when I'm not giving them individual attention, that they are working on the element we are doing, otherwise, for tots, I just want them to keep moving!

For tots, if you have markers, you can draw different targets on the ice, or if you bring beanie babies, and spread them out on the ice, they can retrieve them.

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Skating Dreams

"All your life you are told the things you cannot do. All your life they will say you're not good enough or strong enough or talented enough; they will say you're the wrong height or the wrong weight or the wrong type to play this or be this or achieve this. THEY WILL TELL YOU NO, a thousand times no, until all the no's become meaningless. All your life they will tell you no, quite firmly and very quickly. AND YOU WILL TELL THEM YES." --Nike

Tots seem to enjoy little games and markers are a great tool to draw pictures (football or fish) for swizzles, paths where certain objects require different elements (water to hop over, bridges to duck under while gliding, rocks to swizzle around, etc.), or hearts, stars, letters where a kid simply just skates to them.

If you have access to cones (those little florescent orange ones), use those to snake through (marching on two feet) or swizzle over.

We also use rings similar to those you can throw at the bottom of a pool and dive for, which we toss about the ice. The tots then have to march to each ring, pick it up, and put it in a bucket.

Tots can be a hard age to keep motivated, so as long as they're at least out there on the ice enjoying themselves and keeping somewhat busy, even if they're just marching in circles, then you're doing fine.