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What to Expect When You’re Teaching Elementary School Kids to Swim

Kids in elementary school are fully equipped physically and mentally to learn to swim. How can you make the most of their developmental readiness at every stage when you’re teaching them to swim?

Six years old

At six, kids’ fine and gross motor skills are well developed. They’re good at skipping, throwing, and maybe catching. At this stage, you’ll start to see swimming that resembles somewhat coordinated strokes.

Other kids their age become an important part of their lives at this stage. If you can schedule play time with other kids in the water, you’ll help motivate your kids to learn to swim. Keep lessons as distraction-free as possible, though. Try to schedule swimming lessons when there aren’t friends around.

Seven and eight years old

  • Kids this age are often very curious.
  • They’ve become good communicators.
  • They have a strong sense of fair play.
  • They can learn rules.
  • They do well with developing and practicing skills.
  • They’re learning to cope with frustration.
  • They’ll also be likely to be afraid of the water if they haven’t had experience with it before. They’ll need a lot of time and a gradual approach to get past this fear.

It’s always important to be honest and keep your promises when you’re teaching kids to swim. Kids this age are especially slow to forgive a broken commitment. If you say you’ll let them choose the game at the end of the lesson, follow through, even if it means cutting instruction time short.

9 years old and up

Kids this age are usually very coordinated and good at listening and evaluating. Their minds and bodies are primed for learning physical skills. Just make sure to keep it fun when you’re teaching them to swim, and you’ll do fine.

At this stage, kids can handle longer swimming lessons, but they’ll still get tired and cold much faster than adults. Keep lesson lengths reasonable for your kids. Be sure to watch them carefully for signs of discomfort or fatigue. Kids this age can get so wrapped up in activities that they don’t realize they’re overtired until it’s too late.

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What to Expect When You’re Teaching Preschoolers to Swim

You can start teaching your kids to swim at any age. The more experience they have in the water and the more comfortable they are in the water, the easier and more fun lessons will be for everyone. Kids in preschool are really ready to learn to swim. What can you expect at this stage?

What You Can Expect

  • Kids this age can learn to be water safe.
  • Kids this age can learn to do primitive versions of formal strokes.

When your child is three to five years old, he’ll be able to achieve water safety. Keep in mind that this is not a substitute for adult supervision. No one of any age should swim alone.

You can finally get to the point now where you could describe your child as being able to swim! It won’t necessarily be pretty. Look at how your kids climb into the sandbox, pump on the swings or run. Their facility doing things on land will give you a sense for how developed their swimming can be at this stage.

Kids this age know a lot of words. They’re aware of other kids and love to watch and be with other kids. They can run, gallop and dance. They’re really good now at riding a tricycle and might even be able to ride a bike. They’re better at throwing. They start understanding games and rules.

What You Shouldn’t Expect

  • Lots of coordination
  • A long attention span

Tips for Teaching Preschoolers to Swim

  • Although kids this age know a lot of words, you should still keep instructions simple when you’re teaching them to swim. It takes a lot of energy for them to listen, and they need energy to focus on their bodies, too.
  • Keep lessons short.
  • Offer them simple choices, but make sure you can live with whatever they choose. (“Do you want to blow bubbles by yourself or with me?” instead of “Are you ready to blow bubbles?”)
  • Use swimming with other kids as motivation to keep practicing.
  • Use games in the water to help your child practice skills without the practice feeling like work.
  • There’s a lot of developmental variety: some kids this age look graceful and coordinated and some look more awkward. They’ll all get there in the end. Be patient and respectful of where your child is now.

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What to Expect When You’re Teaching Toddlers to Swim

Toddlers experience a huge rush of physical independence very quickly. How can you use their newfound coordination when you’re teaching them to swim?

What You Can Expect

  • Independent movement in the water
  • Some understanding of water safety

What You Shouldn’t Expect

  • Fancy strokes
  • Independent water safety

How to Teach Toddlers to Swim

Kids this age are ready to be introduced to all the skills they need, but at a rudimentary level. Here are specific things to remember when you’re teaching them:

  • Focus on water safety, but don’t count on their remembering all the time.
  • Kids this age are big fans of the words “no” and “why.” Use that to your advantage.
  • Your child can follow instructions if you give them one at a time.
  • Kids this age tend to get frustrated easily. Take lots of breaks and don’t push too hard.
  • Kids this age can usually throw or kick a ball well enough to move it a little, but they won’t have real ability. They might be able to ride a tricycle, walk down stairs, run well, and stack blocks. Think of how your child does these things when you’re working on arm and leg movement.

Don’t forget that you can get step-by-step instructions for teaching kids of all ages to swim by clicking Get the Book and downloading now.

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How to Set Expectations When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

It’s hard to get where you want to go if you don’t have a clearly defined goal. How do you define that goal when you’re teaching your kids to swim?

Think of what your child is capable of on land. If your baby is just learning to crawl, he’ll be able to similarly explore moving his body in the water, but don’t expect mastery. If your child can walk and run with great coordination, you can expect him to develop similar coordination in the water with practice. Keep your expectations reasonable.

Think about how much practice it took on land to develop the level of mastery your child has, though. Remember the process of learning to crawl, walk or run. At the beginning, it looked awkward and ungainly. Only with time and lots of practice did those movements become a natural way for your child’s body to move. Swimming will be the same. Keep your expectations reasonable.

Keep your expectations about form reasonable. Good form will help your child swim farther and faster, but his body might not be capable of good form. Swimming is like dance, tennis, or golf. Kids learn quickly, but until their minds and bodies are developed enough, don’t expect them to have the level of mastery you’d see in an adult.

Be aware of what it takes to achieve mastery. Athletes practice for a long time thinking about their form. At some point, it becomes second nature—internalized. Without thinking about it, they continue to improve. Learning to swim involves thinking and feeling in a very conscious way for a long time, and there’s a lot to think about and a lot to feel. At some point, the knowledge starts to move into your child’s body instead of just his head, just like walking or riding a bike. Many recent studies have pointed out that the amount of practice required to achieve mastery of a skill is ten thousand hours. It would take your child many years to get that much practice. Have you spent ten thousand hours of your life swimming? That’s an hour a day for almost thirty years. In the meantime (you know what’s coming!), keep your expectations reasonable.

Have I driven you crazy with the “keep your expectations reasonable” mantra? I’ve repeated it because it’s so important. The way your child feels about swimming will depend in large part on your feelings and your feedback. If your expectations are reasonable, you’ll feed his motivation to keep trying. If your expectations are unreasonable, you’ll be frustrated, he’ll be frustrated, neither of you will have any fun, and he’ll want to stay out of the pool and quit rather than disappoint you.