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Time to Play! Getting into the Pool

Kids learn by playing. The more you can make learning to swim fun for your kids, the more they’ll like it, the quicker they’ll learn, and the more fun you’ll have teaching them. This game can help you ease a kid who’s nervous about the water into climbing into the swimming pool.

Have your child pretend to be a plant or tree reaching its roots into the ground. Have him sit on the edge of the pool. How does it feel when the tips of his roots—I mean toes—touch the water? Can he dip them in farther? Can he wiggle and stretch them? Can he stand on the step and reach his arms up like branches while his legs are under the surface? Can he stretch his roots down to the next step? What nutrients are his roots getting from the water? What kind of tree is he? A cherry tree? Does he giggle if you pick cherries from his branches? Try not to tickle!

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Ready, Set, Swim!

If you’ll be making a lot of trips to the swimming pool for lessons this summer, do yourself a favor and put together a kit of supplies you’ll take with you every time you go. Make a list and keep it with your pool kit. Check the list before you go to the pool, and replenish the supplies when you get home.

Prepare to Get into the Pool

Before you get into the swimming pool, gather the toys, equipment and clothing you’ll need, and plan what you’ll do. This post will focus on the toys and equipment you’ll need.

Toys and equipment

Depending on what skills you’ll be practicing, you might want to bring toys that will help you to teach your kids to swim. They can be specialized, or they can just be things you have around the house.

Washcloths and hand towels are great for providing a cool, comfortable place for your child to sit on the edge of the pool. They’re also good for games.

Coins serve not only as something to retrieve from the bottom of the pool but also as built-in motivation to retrieve it.

Foam noodles and rings for the pool can be great teaching tools, but you can also use toys that aren’t designed specifically for swimming, such as regular balls and other toys. Just make sure you know which ones float and which ones sink.

Dog toys are great for kids to play with in the pool. They come in a huge variety of sizes and fun shapes.

Whatever objects you use, make sure that they’re appropriate for your child’s developmental level.

Tools like kickboards, inflatable armbands, and fins can be useful for getting kids to feel comfortable and confident in the water, but they also have downsides:

  • They can give your child too much confidence. You don’t want to experience the moment when your child, not yet water safe, jumps into the pool because he forgot that he didn’t have his armbands on.
  • They don’t teach kids to swim. Being in the water without one of these tools doesn’t feel the same as being in the water with them; time spent using them isn’t helping with actual swimming skills.
  • They can become a crutch. If you don’t ditch them early enough in the learning process, your child will start to feel uncomfortable in the water without them and won’t be willing to give them up easily.
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How to Make the Most of Your Kids’ Swimming Lessons

You’re shelling out a small fortune to ensure that your kids learn to swim. It’s a great gift that you’re giving them, one they’ll enjoy for the rest of their lives. It will help to keep them safe. It will let them have fun. It’s the gateway skill to all sorts of other great water sports: surfing, kayaking, water polo, yachting, aquaerobics. How do you make the most of those lessons, though? How do you make sure that the lessons take, instead of just taking up summertime?

5 Tips for Making the Most of Your Kids’ Swimming Lessons

  1. Angle for the best teacher in the school. If the school’s owner gives lessons one day a week, sign up for that day. If the owner doesn’t seem to mesh with your kids, ask the owner who the best teacher is. Ask other parents who the best teacher is. Get that teacher. Most of the swimming teachers will be college students who are swimmers, not teachers. They’ve gone through a slapdash training program. They’re following a checklist, and they don’t know what to do if your kids need a little something more than what’s on the checklist. You need someone who has experience and an emotional (and preferably financial too) investment in teaching swimming to provide that something extra that will help your kids past the rough spots.
  2. Pay attention. That half hour may be the one solid break in your day, and you could spend it reading a good book or checking email, but don’t. Instead, pay attention to what your kids are practicing in class. You can use that later.
  3. Ask for a recap. It’s tempting to rush straight to the car or the changing room after class, but don’t. Instead, bring a warm drink in a thermos and a big fuzzy towel, wrap your child up and help him get warm, and ask for a one-minute recap of the day’s class. What was the point of the lesson? How did the teacher get it across? Was your child getting it?
  4. Review and visualize. A couple of times a day, discuss the swimming lesson with your kids. It doesn’t have to be a big discussion—a minute or two should do it. Talk about what you observed (that’s what the paying attention was for!) and about what you learned in the recap with the teacher. Ask your kids to imagine that they’re back in the pool and picture themselves going through the motions they learned in class. This visualization exercise, the same one that elite athletes use, will help your kids retain what they’ve learned from lesson to lesson. It will even improve their bodies’ muscle memory. (Weird but true.) One or two lessons a week aren’t going to give your kids the frequency of practice they need to retain much of what they learn. Just talking and thinking about it can help preserve at least some of that learning from lesson to lesson.
  5. Practice. If you’ve got access to a swimming pool between lessons, get in there with your kids. Have fun, and work on the same things they’ve been learning in their swimming lessons. Play games that support learning the skills your kids have been working on in class. If you don’t have a place to get wet (don’t forget the bathtub for practicing some of the basics like blowing bubbles), there are lots of swimming skills that you can practice or enhance with exercises on dry land. (Check out the archives for more tips.)

Even if you’re paying somebody else to teach your kids to swim (and there are reasons to do it yourself), these tips and a few minutes a day of your time can make those lessons go farther and can help your kids to learn to swim and to achieve water safety faster.

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How to Teach Your Kids to Swim

You’re doing your kids a great service by teaching them to swim. You’re helping to keep them safe and providing them with a skill they’ll enjoy for the rest of their lives, either on its own or as a necessary part of the vast array of great water sports. What are you waiting for? Dive in!

Getting Your Head in the Right Place

Teaching your child to swim can be a celebration of your relationship, punctuated by fun, hugs and laughter. It can also be a miserable experience for both of you. It all depends on your expectations and on your approach. Before you even think about getting into the pool, you need to decide how to make sure your expectations and approach are designed to make sure the experience is a joyful and productive one.

You don’t have to be perfect at this to have a great time with your child while you’re teaching him to swim. Like any skill, teaching will get easier the more you do it. Remember to keep your goals in mind:

  • Teaching your child to be water safe
  • Making it a fun and intuitive experience

Remember to be patient with yourself and your child. Trust yourself. You can do it. Use the lessons in this blog, and consider getting the book to give yourself every advantage when you’re teaching your kids to swim.