Summer is coming up fast and that means it’s cooling off at the marshes, beaches and lakes. Knowing how to swim is an important life skill to have. Learning to swim can be a difficult task for parents. Where does it even begin? Leave your panic, because here are some tips and simple exercises to start swimming with the right foot or flipper in the sand (let me try to swim in some water). This will be the first in a series of chapters from the beginnings to the international lessons.
Step 1: Comforter:
One way it matters is that your child is more comfortable in the water. Depending on how old your child is, this might be a difficult task. Go to the shallow end of the pool and run around with your child for a while. Try play as “rosie circle”. Games help to distract children from worrying about water. Continue doing this until your child seems comfortable.
Step 2: Foundations:
The next step is to teach your child several basic techniques that are the cornerstones of swimming. The first skill you want to teach your child to do is how to kick. Kicking is a very important skill in the water. Especially in children, throwing is the main mode of transportation in water. To teach your child to kick the basics all you need is a wall and a pool. First grab your child against the wall with both hands. Preferably where the child can stand. If there is no room where the child can stand, you can hold them around the waist. Then you want the child to stretch their arms and stretch their legs behind them. If they are struggling with this, then you can help them by putting their body in the right position. If it helps you can show them that some children are learners. Once they are in position, instruct them to kick their feet, telling them to splash in the top of the water. Do this for a while and tell them to stop. If you can have them after this, grab them at the end of the kick board and lock them across the tank and go and give them a feeling of movement.
The next technique you want to work on are lizard circles. This is the basic movement of the arms in the free kick or before the crawl. Children have vivid imaginations and so it is a powerful tool in teaching a child to swim. One technique I like to use is called “ice cream scoops”. With an ice cream scoop, I ask the child to pretend to be a pool of one large tub of their favorite flavor of ice cream. Next I tell them to pretend their hands are scooping ice cream. Finally, I tell them that there is a large bowl in front of them to put ice cream into. I tell them to throw their hands in front of them. First you tell them to take it with their right hand and scoop ice cream from front to back up to their shoulders and back to the bowl in a great circular motion. If it helps your hands, then do it. You want to tell the child to make a big cream you want to tell the cat to “spoon” himself by having a lot of water with his hands and they make great circles with their arms. they have alternate arms, then the right, then the left, then the right, and so on.
All together:
After holding the child firmly, it seems to have to kick and shoot the arm at the same time. You can do this either on a wall or hold the baby horizontally in the water so they can hang. of movement Do this boy. Make sure to always encourage and reinforce the proper technique by giving a high five or a hug or whatever you like. Many also try to teach children that more than 20 minutes is useless, as they have very short attention spans, so they try shorter increments of time. Goodbye and keep going! Stay tuned for the next article in the online swimming lesson series. Happy Swimming!
