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Teaching Kids to Feel the Water: Mastery

At each stage of the learning process and for each swimming skill you teach, devote some time specifically to feeling the water and its interaction with the body. When he’s learned to put his head underwater, to do the streamline position, and to kick, have your child experiment and explore.

What happens if you push off from the side with your arms or legs? What happens if you move your arms backwards? Forwards? Up or down? This experimentation is critical, because these things are all different than they are on dry land. Moving your arms backwards propels you forward in the water. Moving your arms down propels you up. Starting to understand this will give your child confidence and control in the water.

Have your child solve problems. How can you go backwards in the water? How can you go forward? Which movements and positions move you with the least effort? Which movements and positions move you with the least splash? Help your child learn to push back to go forward and down to go up.

Use play. Practice moving through the water like a fish or a ninja, disturbing the water as little as possible. How big a splash can you make for fun? How do you do it? Practice sitting on the steps and hitting the water with the flat, broad parts of your body. Okay, now how small a splash can you make? Can you slice your hand into the water without seeing any ripples at all? Practice no-ripple swimming. You’re learning to sneak up on Mom or Dad in the water, so that you can pounce on them.

Kids will discover these things on their own by playing in the water, but you can speed up the process by specifically guiding your child.

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Time to Play! Feeling the Water

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.  Helping them learn what it feels like to move in the water is critical for making their experience learning to swim as fast and easy as possible. It’s easy to make it fun. Try these experiments for teaching your kids how it feels to move in the water.

What does being in the water feel like? Does it feel like flying? Like being an astronaut? Like going down a slide? Like jumping in a bouncy house? Like swinging on a swing? Like riding a bike? You can build a whole session of imaginative play around any one of these ideas.

You’ll have so much fun that nobody will realize you’re gaining body knowledge that’s key to learning to swim. It won’t feel like a swimming lesson. It will feel like a bonus at the end of the swimming lesson. In reality, though, it might be the most important swimming skill you teach all day.

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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. You can use toys your kids are familiar with to make learning to get into the pool easier.

Play with boats in the bathtub. Show your kids video of a boat easing down the boat ramp into the water. (Make sure you check it out first. This isn’t a good time for bloopers.) After your kids have practiced getting into the pool, make a game out of pretending to be a boat going down a ramp into the water.

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Time to Play! Kicking

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. Kicking is a critical swimming skill. Although it doesn’t provide much power, it’s important for stability. When you’re teaching your kids to kick, you can get a leg up by playing this game on land.

Have your child sit in a chair and hold onto the edge with his hands. Have him extend his legs and see how fast he can kick. How slow. How straight he can keep his legs. Are his ankles flexible? Is he flipping his feet like he’s trying to flick his shoes off?

Now try it in the water.