They left. What else to do with your children for a walk in perfect winter weather? Offer to ride on a hill and, taking a couple of ice cubes with you, quickly run into the fresh air!
Is there an ice slide nearby? What's the matter! Let's do it by hand. It seems difficult at first, but in fact, those who have been riding for a long time have a lot of good advice on how to make a slide out of snow.
Lesson plan:
The main thing is to prepare properly!
Where do we start? No, not from the search for shovels and buckets! We will start with a friendly team, call the neighbors' doors and invite the kids, their dads and moms to a responsible task. The whole team, taking with us enthusiasm and excellent mood, we go out to survey the area. An important step, by the way!
Choose a place
We carefully examine the trees and poles growing nearby, so as not to rest our foreheads on them later and not become the bearer of a huge cone.
Pedestrian paths will also become a sports obstacle, you will have to carry pedestrians on yourself. It is better to choose another route.
Illumination is also important, since it gets dark early in winter, and riding with flashlights is completely inconvenient.
We chose a place - do not waste time, it was not in vain that we met. Clear the platform for the future slide from debris.
We select the size
The selected location determines the altitude. The higher you conceived the slide, the more space it will require. Therefore, we will have to proceed from what is available.
Experienced parents advise sculpting a slide according to age. If only for kids, then a height of about a meter is enough.
If you will ride with families, then you need to make it a little higher - about two meters. You need to calculate the length so that the angle of descent is no more than 30-40 degrees, otherwise it will look like a descent with a bungee - from a height head down. It's dangerous, you know!
Well, the width can be any - for tubing, ice, smaller and larger ops, riding in a crowd or one by one.
The place was chosen, the height was determined. Now the question is: when?
We appoint a day
We pick up super trendy phones and open the weather. What suits us?
An ideal option for construction is a thaw during the day, and frost at night. So you can build a hill from easily yielding sticky snow, and at night with a calm soul leave the icy beauty to freeze.
You can be sure that there will be no surprise in the morning - the hill will not turn into a pile of melted snow.
If there is no suitable weather in the near future, then we proceed from what the heavenly office reads to us. Option two:
- or postpone until better times;
- or start at zero temperature.
In order not to waste time, in such weather it is possible to create a foundation, sticky snow will settle and make the structure durable, and we will pour it according to the weather. Night frost for pouring is a prerequisite. During a thaw, pouring water on a hill is Sisyphean labor.
It seems that we have decided, now we are distributing among the friendly members of the construction team who takes what out of the house.
Collecting tools
We are looking for what we have at home, as we may need:
- wide shovels and large spatulas;
- insulated mittens with a rubberized top, if there are none, we do it simply: first, warm woolen gloves, large rubber ones on top;
- country watering cans, hoses, buckets, sprayers;
- everything wooden is flat and wide, which will serve for formwork and descent - boards, plywood, old countertops;
- mops and rags.
What exactly will be needed, you decide for yourself when you discuss the technology of construction and pouring. And how all of the above can come in handy, I will tell you in the options offered by parents who have passed the practical course of “snow architects”.
We collect in parts
A friendly team in the collection, the weather is suitable, the mood is fighting. Let's get started. Let's make the base. These are standard architectural approaches.
Little building tricks
Those that are more cunning are advised to turn on fantasy!
Oh yes, I forgot! And what kind of hills do you sculpt? After all, you can be creative, with a twist. Well, for example, with turns in different directions, then you will ride like bobsledders.
It is possible with fairy-tale characters at the entrance in the form of an arch. And also with two separate slopes - for those that are smaller and for those that are older.
Let's not forget beauty! Give the children paints and paint brushes in their hands, and you will see how your slide will bloom with snowflakes and patterns.
Responsible stage
Are you standing near your work of art, and the eye rejoices?
Now this snow mound needs to be filled with water in order to be preserved and used for its intended purpose. Here, too, there are tricks, you need to approach the process deliberately, otherwise the slide turns into one movement of the hand ... And you will have to do it all over again and in a good way!
Simply taking a bucket and pouring water out or pouring it under pressure from a hose, especially if you use hot water, is the first step to ruin everything. There will be numerous holes and hills.
So what will fit?
If pits suddenly appear, do not despair. We fall asleep with snow and grind the defect. We knock down hills and level them.
Place plywood or cardboard on the platform in front of the ice track. And so that this material is not blown away by the wind and not carried away after the skaters, coat the perimeter with a mixture of water and snow, it will fix your site overnight. Likewise with stairs. For them, wooden slats or planks are suitable.
This completes our main mission. We leave our hill alone all night. Let her get bored, everything is ahead of her!
A few touches to the portrait
In the morning we go outside and evaluate the result. We bring the descent to a perfectly flat surface using the same spatulas and a mixture of water and snow. We fill the hill a second time. This time it is possible on a grand scale - from a bucket or a hose. In another night, your slide will be ready to receive guests.
I propose to take a picture of your ice miracle so that the children can boast at school among their classmates. Yes Yes! Let the guys pull their parents out into the yard, and they will also have their own slide.
And you, friends, when was the last time you built a hill of snow?
Or, when was the last time you went down a hill?
Don't remember already? Sometimes she is like that.
I propose to add an item to our diaries for the near future: “Ride down the hill with children”! And be sure to do it. Well, in order to motivate both you and myself, I suggest watching this video and remembering how it happens when you fly from a mountain... and inside everything freezes with happiness...
That's all for me! And you? Are there any additions to the topic of the article? Then share them in the comments. And also share the link to the article with your friends using the social networking buttons.
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Have a fun and interesting winter!
Always yours, Evgenia Klimkovich.