Posted on

How to Let Your Child Drive the Lesson to Maximize What He Learns

When you’re teaching your kids to swim, it’s easy to get caught up in your own plan for the lesson, but you and your child will do better if you focus on observing and responding to your child. The lesson plan is just a starting point. The more your child drives the lesson, the more tailored it will be for exactly what he needs to learn and where he is developmentally. How do you turn your lesson plan into a child-driven swimming lesson?

Watch your kids.

Watch your child to see not only how he’s doing with the swimming skills you’re teaching but also how he’s feeling. If he looks nervous or afraid, move closer, provide more physical support, and heap on the praise for the effort he’s making. If he looks frustrated, take a break, backtrack to a skill you’ve already covered, or take a different approach to the skill you’re practicing. You know your child. When he’s frustrated, he might want more guidance, or he might want more space to try things independently.

When in doubt, help.

If you’re not sure whether your child needs more support while you’re teaching, give it to him. It’s important to make sure your child feels confident and secure. Fear and frustration make learning hard, so step in if there’s any chance his feelings are heading in that direction. Tomorrow’s post will look more at how to respond to fear.

Respond to boredom.

If he looks bored and he’s not physically challenged by what you’re practicing, congratulations! You’ve gone as far as you can with that skill for the lesson. Expand or refine the skill slightly to make it challenging again or move on to the next skill. If he looks bored and he’s still not quite getting it, switch to a game that uses the skill he’s practicing instead of straight practice.

Keep an eye on comfort.

Try to spot early signs of cold or fatigue. If your child looks cold or physically uncomfortable, it’s time to get out of the pool, dry off, sip a hot drink, and have a snack.  As he gets tired, his form will become sloppy, and that sloppy form is what your child will start to internalize and make into a habit. When you see your child’s form—at whatever level of development it is—start to deteriorate during a swimming lesson, call it quits.

Posted on

Backtrack to Move Forward When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

How can going backwards help you move forward when you’re teaching your kids to swim?

It reinforces what they’ve learned and gives them the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the swimming skill you’re working on. It also prepares them for learning the next skill without the awkwardness of not fully understanding what’s come before.

I discussed the importance of reviewing in an earlier post. Here are some steps to take to make reviewing work for you.

Set Your Expectations

Don’t expect your child to pick up where you left off at the end of the last lesson. Backtrack a bit and work up to the skills your child was working on at the end of the last lesson. If there are skills your child has already mastered, you don’t need to work on them in every lesson.

Where to Start

Start your review at the very beginning of the previous lesson’s new material and spend five to ten minutes practicing it. If your child feels really confident after the first five minutes, you can move on. If he still seems tentative, use more of your lesson on review.

Let Your Kids Riff

Try having your child experiment with doing the skill in different ways and comparing the results. Ask him to point out what he thinks works the best. Steer him away from unsafe or ineffective movements.

Play!

Ask your child how he thinks things are going. After some practice, make the skill a vehicle for play.

Posted on

How to Structure Your Swimming Lesson to Make the Best Use of Your Time in the Pool

Here’s another huge advantage you have over swimming schools. What is it and how can you use it when you’re teaching your kids to swim?

It’s time out of the pool.

Of course you’ll prepare what you’re going to teach well before you get to the pool. Make sure what you’re planning to teach is a single skill. If you can break it down into simpler pieces, break it down and pick just one of the pieces to teach.

You can also take advantage of the time you spend away from the pool to prepare your child for what the day’s lesson will be. Over breakfast, you can talk about what you’ll be learning, why it’s important, and what’s fun about it. The swimming teacher you hire doesn’t have that luxury. They have to spend valuable pool time doing the things you can do before you and your kids get wet.

Start Teaching Your Kids to Swim on Dry Land

Talk with your child about what you’ll be doing. Ask your child what parts of the body he thinks he’ll be focusing on or using most. Ask why it’s important to learn the skill. Ask how he thinks it will feel. Ask what he thinks the favorite part of the lesson will be. Help him visualize how his body will move. Will he be moving like a fish? Like a boat? Tell him a story about the movement. Compare it to other animals or other activities he already knows.

Practice any elements of the skill that you can on land. Blow bubbles in a bowl or sit on the edge of a chair to practice kicking.

Lay as much groundwork as you can for your lesson while you’re at home, at the park, or out doing errands.  That way, when you’re at the pool, ready to start the lesson, you can use more of your valuable pool time just for learning and practicing, instead of for explaining.

Structure the Swimming Lesson

Each lesson should last fifteen to twenty minutes. If your child appears happy to continue and comfortable in the water—not too cold or tired—you can spend as long as half an hour on your lesson.

Stay tuned for details on each part of the structure, coming next week. Tomorrow’s Friday, though, and Friday is time to play.

Posted on

How to Leverage an Advantage You Have Over Every Swimming School When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

Your ability to adapt your lesson plan to exactly what your child needs on any given day gives you a big advantage over swimming schools that have group lessons or college students teaching from a rote formula. How can you leverage this advantage?

Look for cues.

If your child says he’s bored or looks bored, move on to something else even if you’d planned to spend more time on the current skill. It may be that he’s approaching mastery of the skill at his level.

Take the feedback your child gives you, in words and in body language, about how he’s experiencing the lesson. If he’s tense or unhappy, ask him about it. Take a short break, play a game, or switch to a skill he’s already mastered.

If your child seems fascinated by practicing a skill or exploring something new, and you’d planned to move on to something else, let him stick with it until he’s exhausted his interest.

Follow your child.

The plan you make for each swimming lesson is a starting point. Let your child’s responses to what you’re teaching determine how closely you follow your plan. The more you follow your child’s interests, the more he’ll get out of the lesson, even if what he’s learning isn’t exactly what you thought it would be.

When you’re learning to swim, you don’t have the same level of control over your body and your life as when you’re on land. That lack of control can be stressful or scary. The more you let your child control what’s happening in the water, the more confidence he’ll have and the more comfortable he’ll feel about trying new things. The more new things he tries, the more quickly he’ll learn how his body works in the water. The better his understanding of how his body works in the water, the easier it will be to learn each new skill. Letting your child lead you away from your original lesson plan when you’re teaching him to swim can make the entire process of learning to swim go more smoothly.