PARENTS AND TODDLERS IN THE POOL
MoIra SImes
PARENTS AND TODDLERS IN THE POOL
We never thought swimming lessons would be this fun! Our Pre-Kindergarten class have been attending a 4-week swimming program with Baby Dolphins, owned by our English teacher Moira Simes and her husband Yunus Uygur, who are both certified Birthlight baby swimming instructors. The best part of this weekend activity is that one of our parents had to go into the water with us! The lessons are in English and last about 45 minutes. We learn how to swim and learn new techniques; but most importantly, we spend valuable time with our moms and dads. At first, some of us were a little hesitant to swim in a deep pool, however, with the Birthlight approach that our teachers use, they helped us feel very comfortable and safe. Needless to say, there are many social and physical benefits to our swimming lessons. Furthermore, however, is how we are learning to overcome our fear of the water without forceful conditioning, trusting our parents to keep us safe and to build confidence in deep waters. Once we enter the pool we splash around in our parent’ s arms and then follow our swimming teachers’ instructions. We get to swim on our parent’ s backs and enjoy the ride while they swim across the pool, blow bubbles in the water with our mouths and nose, learn how to streamline while holding on to our parent’ s arms( keeping arms, body and legs straight and kick) and the most enjoyably, stepping onto the floating mat and jumping onto parent’ s arms. Some of us can make flips on the mat before we jump into the water! We even had one classmate asking his dad to shake the mat to see how long he could stand on it before he fell into the water. He called it surfing! Our teachers would end the lesson with a song called the“ Toddlers in the Pool” where our parents would move us to the left, right, up, down, and we would splash, kick and blow bubbles in the water. The hardest part of the lesson is getting out of the pool as we have so much fun swimming with our teachers and parents.
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