My five year old recently declared that he wanted to be a hockey player. Being from Florida and having literally more fingers on my hand than times on an ice rink I turned to Google to find someone that could teach him to ice skate first. And luckily I found the Learn to Skate program at DU.
It is run by a really lovely woman named Bernadette and every instructor we've had to date has been kind and compassionate and seems to make falling on cold, hard ice fun somehow. Because my five-year-old fell a LOT and he wanted to go back for more every week, even talking me into ice skating during free skate with him. Thanks to that I've now ice skated more in the past 3 months than in the rest of my life combined, and you know what? I'm getting better.
Classes start from the age of three and there's pretty much nothing more adorable than a three-year-old on tiny skates. Skaters are required to wear a helmet and gloves are suggested (definitely do this for your kids.) They have both figure skates (with the toe pick) and hockey skates to learn on. And the classes are broken up into really small blocks so the kids feel like they are successfully moving through challenges.
Your session pass also gets you 8 free skate punches that you can use just to skate or for the drop-in hockey practice (you have to be 5+ to participate in this portion.) Sessions last eight weeks I believe and the cost is comparable to any kind of activity I've signed my children up for to date (music, gymnastics, etc.)
And they do offer adult ice skating classes if you are looking for yourself. As a matter of fact, I may have to join one soon to keep us with my son... read more