Sk8r Grrl

Not content with just being an awesome roller-blader, ice skater and boogie boarder, Littletree’s newest fad is skateboarding.

She has a few friends who skateboard, so she got the bug, and tried it out a few times, but hadn’t really gotten a good opportunity to learn to skateboard without a board of her own.

After several months of her constantly bugging occasionally reminding me politely that she wants to get a skateboard, I found one in our budget so I bought it for her as a present (lucky Littletree – normally she has to save up herself to buy that sort of thing)!

Starting out slowly at first, she’s getting the hang of it really quick – I’m always amazed because I could never do stuff like that as a kid. But her balance is really good and she’s quick to work out how to do tricks.

We’ve been bringing the board with us to homeschool group so Littletree gets to practice with other kids and learn tips and tricks from them too

So much awesome :)

Faeries on Ice

So, we’re totally getting into skating of all sorts – after my recent foray into Roller Blading with homeschool group, we’ve gone to the roller rink a couple times more, and this week we went ice skating again with the Gold Coast home school group, which is vibrant and thriving.

Remember that Littletree is a long-time ice skating enthusiast, it’s great to see how she’s improving over time, and her confidence and skill level is improving so much. And since I’ve started skating more, I’m getting a whole lot more confident myself

I even got confident enough to teach a few of the absolute beginners in the group, which was great – I made some new friends along with practising skating :)

I even managed to get myself up to a decent speed going backwards, and then turn around to face forwards while still going in the same direction. Which I thought was a pretty great achievement, until I saw the awesome tricks Littletree is pulling off…

And of course we got into discussions about physics, gravity, friction, the laws of motion, and somehow, genetics while skating.

Skate!

Homeschool group meets regularly at the local roller rink, but since I’ve never roller bladed and only ever roller skated twice when I was a kid and both times managed to injure myself. I always sit with the other parents on the sidelines, saying that I prefer to maintain the integrity of my limbs.

But I can ice skate… well, at a very limited level – I can keep myself upright and going around the rink without falling over, remember, we’ve been a bunch of times before (no one pay too close attention to my choice of attire, that I only now notice is due for an update).

So I decided it’s time to try it out, and I gave my very first attempt at roller-blading a burl.

I started out a bit wobbly – being used to ice skating it took a circuit to get out of the habit of trying to push off and brake with my toes, and LIttletree gave me some tips

I did at least manage to keep my balance, and after one circuit hugging the guard rail, I was off and whizzing around

I had an awesome time, and got to do a few rounds with Littletree as well. Heaps of other homeschooling families showed up this week, including several new families, so that was great to have more kids on the rink as well.

I can’t wait to go again!!! Maybe I’ll practice a bit and join the local roller derby league…