Keep up skills of kids swimming lessons on summer holidays with Hampton Swim School
5 ways to keep up the skills of your kids swimming lessons while on summer holidays
Ahh summer holidays – they’re a fun time to practice the skills of your kids swimming lessons while you refresh and recharge our batteries after a year of work or school or parenting. Summer holidays are essential to break up routines and restore a little sanity (mostly for parents). Though one thing not to forget completely over the summer holidays are your children’s swimming skills. Here are some ways to include swimming reminders into your holidays.
1. Practice safe water entries
In summertime it’s great to run and jump into a pool. But your kids swimming lessons always teach young swimmers that it’s important to always use a safe water entry. Whenever your little ones are entering pools always remind them to use the safe water entry technique. If you’re at the beach it’s a great opportunity to talk to them about how to safely enter the surf – starting with swimming between the flags and no diving.
2. Star floats for fun
Buoyancy is a primary water skill in kids swimming lessons and you can make it a fun game while you’re on summer holidays. When swimming with your children, in water of almost any depth, try practicing some star floats. Then you can play a game of who can float the longest. It’s a great way to practice this basic but important skill.
3. Kicking practice from kids swimming lessons
Kicking gives good propulsion in most swimming strokes, so practicing kicking like in the kids swimming lessons is great at any time. While on holidays your children can practice their front kicking while sitting on the side of a swimming pool or sitting in the shallow water of a wading pool. Then front kicking can be practiced while holding on to the side of a pool, a noodle, kickboard or other float. You can also turn kicking in to a game to see who can make the biggest spash!
4. Submersion silliness
To have fun with submersion and breath control similar to that learnt in the kids swimming lessons, try putting goggles on your child and yourself and look at each other under the water. Maybe try making silly faces while submerged or if you have other older children swimming with you, you can submerge and watch the other kids swim towards you. This can be great fun for pre-school kids.
5. Have a race or two
This can be an activity for your whole family, regardless of who is having kids swimming lessons. Why don’t you all have a race or two in the different strokes that your children are learning? This gives older children a good opportunity to practice their freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly, while competing against mum and dad. And younger children can get a piggy-back in the water from parents (usually just doing breaststroke).