Swimming Lessons For Children

Swimming lessons for children can be a challenge to conduct if you are inexperienced. You may have to look at the various approaches when teaching younger children in the pool. There are several ways you can go about this, which are outlined below. It is important to understand how children learn. You need to make activities a fun process for them. This is why we include games and other things with children’s schoolwork because it helps them learn. Younger children have to be taught in a different way then older children do.

Make it Like Play

You want the learning process to be a lot like play. Swimming lessons for children should not be just regular drills, they should focus on building essential swimming skills. You want the kids to laugh and have fun while they were learning how to swim. The children should be playing while they are learning. You can do this by creating different games for them. You can incorporate these games into your swimming lessons. Make sure that you praise the children afterward and tell them that they have done a good job. This will reinforce the skills that you were teaching them.

Compliments & Kinaesthetic Feedback

Children attending swimming lessons like praises and compliments. You will find that young children will get frustrated quite quickly. If you give them positive reinforcement, this will help them as they learn how to swim.

Kinaesthetic feedback are very useful as they will learn the best when doing it. One technique you can use for preschoolers is to let them feel the fast and small kicks as you are maneuvering their legs through this type of movement.

You can also use visual cues with kinaesthetic feedback, as this method also works. Show them the right way and then show them an exaggerated wrong way. You want to show them the right way again after that. Here is a guide to help you do this:

Show them a good fast kick
Demonstrate a bad kick but exaggerated a lot so that they laugh
Demonstrate the right kick again to reinforce what you want the child to do. This will work well when you combine it with kinaesthetic feedback
Hold the child’s legs, so the kick is perfect.

You want to maneuver their legs, so the kick is bad. You then maneuver their legs, so the kick is correct again. This technique will help them learn the right way to kick

Use Of Verbal & Visual Cues

Preschoolers are going to have to get into the water, and this will require having their face in the water as well. As such, they will need to be able to do the following:

The child will have to be able to hold their breath
They will have to be able to do air exchange to breathe while swimming continuously
A child will need to be able to kick so they can propel themselves through the water

Most children will not be using their arms at this time as they are not ready for this as they do not have the necessary skills. They will be working towards doing a movement such as a dog paddle, where they have to be able to move their arms quickly and keep their face out of the water so they can breathe properly. This type of skill should only be taught once the child has the ability to hold their breath in a horizontal position for around three to five seconds. They will then learn how to swim at the surface while they have their face in the water. Then can then use either a rollover breath or a pop-up breath.

Useful Cues For Children Swimming Lessons:

Holding their breath – Say things such as “hold your breath” or “balloon face,” so they know it’s time to hold their breath.
Air Exchange – Say “blow out your mouth and nose or get air in your mouth.” You could also say, “get your air blow it out.”
Kicking – Say things such as “small fast kicks” or “fast kicks.”
Swim and Air Exchange – Use the phrase “swim and breathe.”

The point is not to go into a lot of detail when you are teaching young preschoolers to swim. You need to focus on the things that are going to help them learn the skills necessary to help them become proficient swimmers.