Next stage for 5 year old

A snowHead

Hi there

DD recently attended a Level 1 course at Hemel during the half term. She achieved 1a but still needs to work on 1b: we go on our holiday on 17 January and would like her to be in the OUrson level, rather than Piou Piou. I spoke to the instructor (a very nice Scottish lady called Linda) and she recommended that she does at least another lesson before we go which we are happy to do. However, what I was wondering is if it would be a good idea to book her onto the one hour group session and then have that followed immediately by a 30 min private lesson (I'm sure I saw they did 30 min lessons there) or should we do it the other way around?

Thanks
CB

A snowHead

<though, given the group lessons are at 0900 hrs, we would need to do the private lesson on another day if we should do that first.

CB

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

CaurnieBred, you could send rob@rar a PM - he works at Hemel.

There was a thread about ESF classes recently - it tends to go on age. So I think, for example, a 6 year old complete beginner would be in Ourson (and when they graduate from that they'd be in Flocon). Piou Piou "enrolment" depends on age rather than ability and is for littlies.

It seems that different ESFs might have slightly different age criteria for splitting between PP and Ourson. 5 year old might go one way in one resort, another in another resort. The person who posted here was cross because despite doing PP twice, and having done well, his son had to do it again, because at 4.5 he was young for Ourson, despite being a good little skier. So in some places I think your daughter, even if she had never set foot on a ski, would be in Ourson. And equally, in some places, she could be a budding world class competitor and if their age limit for Ourson is 6, she'd go in Piou Piou.

You could ring and ask them? Or find a less rigid ski school; ESF can be a bit of a pain sometimes. If you look up the website of ESF where you are going there'll be stuff on childrens levels and ages.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

CaurnieBred, what pam w says. Thread is called 'piou piou achieved'.

From our experience I would say that the more dome time the better for little ones, it builds confidence and they are much more at ease in resort as they have fewer things to worry about!

One tip too is to make sure that your daughter can get up on her own if she falls, last year my son at just 4 wouldn't do this, it resulted in him being demoted a class even though his skiing was up to it (he then very quickly learnt to get up Toofy Grin

).

Out of the snow garden the kids have to be able to get themselves up, the instructors are quite strict about this as can't be side stepping up the hill to pick up the kid at the back of the line. I only mention this because of our experience and of what I have seen in the dome where when little kids fall a passing skier will almost always stop beside them and pick them up which is kind but then can mean they don't learn to do it for themselves and so they struggle in resort.