Spokesmama: Linnaeus Takes to the Ice, Sort Of

Confession: I have been remiss in my duties as a Canadian parent. I have never taken either of my children ice skating. Though I started skating when I was two, with those little double bladed skates that strap onto boots, I haven't bothered to drag my own kids to an arena. In my own defense, it is slightly harder to go ice skating here in Vancouver. You need to actually go to an arena when there's public ice skating scheduled & pay & everything. I lived in the East Kootenays as a child, so ice skating happened on frozen lakes, sloughs, our back garden, the firehall parking lot... pretty much everywhere in the winter. & we all had our own ice skates, of course.

Back to the present: Linnaeus' class, as well as the two other kindergarten classes at the school (66 five-year-olds!), all piled into a big yellow school bus & headed to a local skating rink. After much hemming & hawing about shoe sizes--though to be honest, maybe a full third had their own skates--we laced them into their rental skates & helmets today for a spin around the ice. I went along as a volunteer to help with all the skate lacing, but mostly to help Linnaeus with what was sure to be a difficult activity for him.

All laced up & ready to skate!

I wasn't wrong in my prediction. Linnaeus hated the feeling of his feet constantly sliding out from under him & only with one of the skating frames (what are those things supposed to be called??) with me pushing it was he able to move anywhere. He never actually fell, because I was holding him pretty much the entire time.

We took a break for a snack after a short while, then returned to the ice, but it wasn't long before he was done. D-O-N-E done. So I helped him off the ice, wiped away his tears & left him sitting for a bit on the benches so I could glide around. I picked up other children, & helped his friend Q skate around & then brought him over to Linnaeus so he could have his snack as well.

Considering how much Linnaeus seemed to hate skating, I was worried he wouldn't want to do it ever again, much less a week today when his class is booked to go again. But when our time was up & I got off the ice to go unlace his skates, he told me he wanted to go again.

I held him up & we glided around half the rink as the last stragglers were making their way off. We'll call that a success. Here's a short video before he took his last break: