When you’re teaching your kids to kick, you can take advantage of time outside the swimming pool to work on this skill.

How to Teach Your Kids to Kick without a Swimming Pool

Have your child sit in a chair and follow these steps to teach him the important points of the swimming kick.

1. Demonstrate what it means to flex and to point, and have him practice it without any kicking motion.
2. Have him hold still while you move his feet for him from flexed to pointed and back again, so that he really feels the ankle and can isolate that feeling.
3. Have your child sit on the edge of the chair and brace himself with his hands. Ask him to lean his torso back slightly for balance and kick from the hip, keeping his legs straight, his ankles loose, and the kick small and narrow.

Use this opportunity to touch his upper thigh to show him where the work is being done. He won’t get a great sense from this exercise for how important the ankles are, because air resistance is so much less than water resistance, but he will get a good feel for keeping his legs straight and for the range of motion from the hip.