Yesterday’s post showed how you can start to teach kids swimming body shape and position on dry land. Here’s how to move the swimming lesson into the pool.

The Next Stage of Teaching Kids Swimming Body Shape and Position

In the pool, you can practice doing streamline glides on the stomach, back, and sides to get a feel for the differences. Finally, have your child concentrate on the difference between how his body moves in the water when he’s dog paddling and how it moves when he’s streamlined. Does one way of moving feel more like real swimming?

Ask your child to try things in the water. How would your body move if you were really slippery? What could you do to feel slippery in the water? How would your body move if it weighed nothing? What could you do to feel like you weigh nothing in the water? (Practice shifting balance to see what feels more like weightlessness.)

When you’re starting out, stand just a few pace from the edge of the pool and let your child aim for the pool, preferably ending right at the steps so that he doesn’t have to lift his head and arms out of position to grab onto the edge. You can also have him push off from the side and aim for you.