Teaching Children by Age
Theory & Practice

These students enjoy being outdoors and are interested in the environment and other living things. They may know a great deal about how different animals move. They enjoy noticing patterns in nature, observing and remembering changes in their surroundings, and using that awareness to make decisions.

Connect skiing or snowboarding movements with the way an animal moves. Give students opportunities to interact with their surroundings and use their senses.

These students enjoy talking, reading, writing and storytelling, as well as spoken and written communication. They often have a broad vocabulary and describe things well.

Present information creatively. Analogies often make sense to these students.

These students enjoy reasoning, asking questions, experimenting, working with numbers and finding patterns. They may be strong in mathematics and science and enjoy solving problems through logic. They like sorting and categorizing—for example, counting runs, snow guns or lift rides.

Try counting exercises or use a scale to explain differences in degree or intensity.

These students often enjoy drawing, building, designing, creating, imagining and watching films. They may be good at visual arts, puzzles, maps and noticing changes, and use pictures and mental images to process information.

Try visualization, draw in the snow, or study tracks and the spray of snow from skis or a snowboard. Clear, accurate demonstrations are especially valuable. Watching video of their own skiing or riding can also help.

These students enjoy movement, touch and body language. They may excel at sports and hands-on activities and have a strong awareness of their bodies. Physical sensations help them understand, as they do in dance.

While stationary, let students explore how a movement feels in different ways. Drawing connections between movements in different sports, such as skating and skiing, can also be helpful.

These students are sensitive to sound and rhythm. They enjoy humming, keeping a beat, listening to music and playing instruments. They may be good at noticing sounds, maintaining a rhythm, remembering through melodies and distinguishing pitch.

Try humming different melodies or playing music, using different rhythms to match turns of different sizes.

These students enjoy making friends, group activities and conversation. They may be good at understanding, responding to and leading others, as well as organizing activities. They like solving problems with other people, ask questions and readily contribute answers.

Create opportunities to learn from one another through comparison, cooperation and interviews. Group activities that involve everyone can be particularly effective.

These students enjoy thinking independently, pursuing personal interests and reflecting on their feelings. They are good at working through problems in their own minds, following their intuition and reaching their own conclusions. They enjoy the process of learning.

Give students time to make sense of new information. Allow enough time for individual practice so they can develop their own understanding. Everyone draws on several intelligences to process information.

Young children learning snowsports often engage in parallel play: they play alongside others rather than together. They may still see the world largely from their own perspective, with themselves at its centre. Sharing may not yet be part of how they approach play.

Because social skills are still developing, competition is not an appropriate focus. Keep games open-ended and let the child’s imagination lead. Pretending to be different zoo animals while learning to glide or turn is a popular example.

At around five, simply calling something a “joke” may make it funny. As children grow, wordplay becomes appealing—such as an endless exchange of knock-knock jokes on a long lift ride. Telling the joke is often more entertaining than the punchline.

Between roughly three and seven, children move from enjoying solitary play to enjoying play with others. The shared experience can matter more than rules or winning, so competitive games may not always satisfy them. Try games in which the outcome is unimportant. A favourite is letting the child teach the instructor.

Children are increasingly aware of differences between people and may tease one another. Although teasing can be part of growing up, instructors should watch closely, keep it harmless and limit it. It can easily go too far. Model humour that does not embarrass a child by laughing at your own funny mistakes.

Children in this age group begin to care about the results of their efforts. Rules matter more, and competition can be motivating. Some already play team sports at school and are learning what winning and losing mean. Build games into lessons to sustain enjoyment and motivation, and let a sense of achievement encourage further learning.

These are the needs that keep the body alive and comfortable. When they are unmet, children may feel hungry, cold or tired. As discomfort increases, their ability to focus on learning declines until they feel comfortable again.

Children may not tell you directly how they feel, but their body language can say a great deal. Sudden changes—drowsiness, irritability, unusual silence or crying—may signal physical discomfort. First identify the problem and address it. You may need to change the lesson plan or the timing of the day’s goals. Imagine sitting in a clinic with feet so cold that you cannot feel your toes: you would be thinking about warming up, not listening to the doctor.

Children need both physical and psychological safety. Unfamiliar surroundings, people and activities can make young children uneasy or afraid, sometimes contributing to separation anxiety. Most instructors have seen a young child become overwhelmed; outwardly, this may look like a tantrum.

A safe, low-pressure learning environment is the foundation of a caring relationship. Encourage students to talk about what they think and feel without fear of judgment or ridicule. Remembering what they tell you shows that you care about their safety and learning. Students notice what you say and do. Non-judgmental language and a positive tone help create a safe, enjoyable lesson.

Students are more receptive to what you know once they feel that you care about them. They want recognition and appreciation from their instructor and peers. Activities that involve solving problems or making decisions together can help build friendships.

Skiing and snowboarding are individual sports, but sharing them with good friends adds to the fun. A friend’s “Great turn!” or a high-five can feel wonderful. Explain what made the turn good so the student can connect your encouragement with a specific movement and repeat it.

Children want to feel capable and valued. Self-esteem reflects how they see their own worth. Achieving something and recognizing that success helps them develop a sense of competence.

Help students set goals that are achievable while still offering a challenge. Be patient and kind as they work towards them. Give positive, timely feedback; encouragement makes persistence more likely. Create opportunities for children to experience success, building the confidence and self-worth that support further growth.

This means developing one’s potential, exploring personal interests and pursuing meaningful growth. Children may begin setting their own goals, motivated by “I want to learn” or “I want to try,” as well as by praise from others.

Within safe limits and the child’s capabilities, involve them in choosing goals and ways to approach them. Ages 1–4: choose a small task to explore on snow. Ages 5–7: create a story or game around a gliding task. Ages 8–11: propose a solution to a problem, such as how to turn in time while travelling through trees. Offer appropriate support while gradually developing independent thinking.

Sensorimotor and preoperational stages: children understand the world through what they can see, touch and do, gradually using language and imagination. Abstract directions and lengthy instructions can be difficult to understand.

A young child who is gliding may suddenly stop, wondering, “Where are my skis?” because they are out of sight. The child also explores the texture of snow through touch, discovering that it can feel smooth or heavy. A slightly older child can work out where the skis are and why they have stopped sliding.

Predominantly the preoperational stage, gradually moving towards concrete operations. Children enjoy roles and concrete examples. Check their understanding of left and right, distance and instructions with several steps. Demonstrate with real objects.

A child may be fully immersed in an imaginary world: a hunter in the forest, Robin Hood roaming the countryside, or a World Cup racer preparing for the best race of their life. At this stage, the child is not simply pretending to be the racer. In their imagination, they are the racer.

Concrete operational stage: logical thinking develops, along with the ability to judge speed and distance, compare and order things, and understand observable cause and effect. Visualization becomes a useful learning tool. Complex, abstract explanations should still not be the main teaching approach.

Children begin connecting their movements with the results on snow. They increasingly understand a turn path drawn by the instructor and can imagine following it. As spatial awareness develops, they become better at judging distance and speed. They may ask, “Why could I stop there last time, but overshot it this time?” Observation, comparison and personal experience help them understand these concrete relationships.

Changes in body size, strength, muscle control and coordination have a profound effect on how children move and perform in skiing and snowboarding. For example, young children whose leg and ankle strength and coordination are still developing rely on skeletal alignment to control edge angles and resist the forces that build through a turn.

Their movements may look different from an adult’s, but they are making effective use of the body they have. As their bodies continue to develop, guide them towards more refined movement patterns. Observe how the skis or snowboard interact with the snow as well as the child’s movements; both help you assess performance.

Young children focus on how physical activity feels. Control of the head and trunk develops before control of the limbs. They sometimes use their arms and hands to imitate movements of the legs and feet.

Movements may happen in the wrong sequence or use more force than needed. Coordination gradually develops to include awareness of how the body moves through space.

Children aged approximately four to eight are developing spatial awareness.

You may notice young skiers and snowboarders bumping into one another when the group comes to a stop.

From roughly eight to eleven, movements become more refined, efficient and mechanically effective.

During puberty and the accompanying growth spurt, coordination may temporarily decline. This can be frustrating. Encourage students to be patient and practise familiar skills that have become harder as their bodies change.

Young children have proportionally larger heads and a slightly higher centre of mass than adults. By around age eight, the centre of mass is near the navel. Their stance may therefore appear farther back than an adult’s.

Their different proportions allow children to balance in positions that would be difficult for adults. A balanced stance centres the body’s mass over its base of support (BOS). Young children often move their bodies as a whole to generate momentum; gross motor control develops before fine motor control.