Indoor “sock skating” at the Schiele Museum is just the thing for kids to get out their energy during colder months. Located in Gastonia, NC, the Schiele Museum is only about an hour from Greenville, SC, or 35 minutes from Charlotte, NC.
Sometimes you just come across something so fun and unexpected that you have to share it – which is exactly what happened when we visited the Schiele Museum of Natural History in Gastonia, NC during a rainy day and to our great surprise, learned that our kids could go ice skating but with socks!
If you didn’t know sock skating was a thing, don’t feel too bad. We didn’t either until we happened upon it at the Schiele Museum. It’s exactly as it sounds: skating with socks on instead of use skates on ice. We’ll tell you more in this story, plus give you the dates when you can get free tickets to the museum.
Sock skating for the 2023-24 season opens November 24, 2023.
About the Schiele Museum of Natural History
We have a whole Schiele Museum story about this amazing museum, which is worth a read. This museum has extensive exhibits on animals, plants, gems and minerals, and dinosaurs. They also have an outdoor farm and Catawba Village.
If you love learning about the stars, don’t forget to see a show in the planetarium. You can reserve your seat when you buy your tickets at the entrance.
Sock Skating
During the wintertime, the Schiele Museum has a room dedicated to a winter wonderland of Sock Skating. The room is lit to look like it’s snowing, complete with a little snowbank and a wooden house with a Christmas tree in the window. We have a short reel if you want to see how it all works!
There are benches for parents to relax and watch their kids enjoy skating on a slippery floor. All kids need are socks and they need to be sure to bring their own as the museum does not have socks to lend out.
Sock Skating is for kids ages 2-10 years old and you need to purchase a wristband for $3 for each kid to participate. When we went, it was a busier day and the front desk ladies gave us a timed entry ticket, which was fine. We were basically able to go when we saw there weren’t many kids inside and it worked out great.
My kids absolutely loved this and I thought it was such a creative and unique idea for indoor fun. We spent a lot of time at the other museum exhibits as well, which were awesome. This is easily a great day trip from the Upstate.
Sock Skating at Winter Wonderland opened November 25th and runs usually through February.
Tickets to the Schiele Museum
Tickets to the museum are $7/adults, $6/kids 4-18 and kids ages 3 and under are free. Planetarium tickets are $5/each and farm tickets are $3/each.
There are certain dates every month where admission to the museum is free, thanks to the support of Duke Energy. Free museum admission is available the second Tuesday and fourth Friday of every month from Noon – 4 pm.
Do you have a Roper Mountain Science Center membership? The Museum is part of the same ASTC passport program as RMSC which means great news! If you have a RMSC membership, then you get in free to the Shiele Museum. The ASTC Passport program gets you free admission into partner museums all over the world. If you plan to travel, it can pay for itself in just one trip to a partner museum.
Schiele Museum of Natural History & Planetarium
1500 East Garrison Boulevard, Gastonia NC