Swimming Lessons

One thing which has been really fantastic in Geelong is the quality of swimming tuition - there is a swim centre dedicated only to teaching (ie you can't just go there for a splash about) and we have lessons for all the kids on a Saturday morning.


The thing that we have noticed is that before they teach children to swim, they teach them not to drown - how to hold onto the edge of a pool and 'monkey walk' along to the steps, how to turn as soon as you go under water - ie turn back to face what you fell from, how it feels in the water wearing clothes or a life jacket, how to float on your back... all simple things, but you can see that it could be the difference between a child panicking and drowning, or possibly just climbing out a bit wet.


Phoebe goes in the pool with Nick and happily jumps in from the side, goes underwater and pops back up facing the right way, holds on to the side of the pool and climbs out and swims to daddy through a foam 'tunnel'. Humpty Dumpty and Ring a Ring a Roses are also part of her repertoire, and she likes to court danger by trying to swim away from Nick, which is only temporarily successful...


Ella is a true water baby and has made incredible progress this year - she can swim short distances by herself and is learning the beginnings of proper strokes. She can retrieve toys from under water and loves to put her goggles on and look under water at other people - especially if they make funny faces at her!

The slide in the picture here only comes out for the last class of each term, so it's a bit of a treat.

Will has also suddenly got the hang of the swimming thing and now seems to genuinely enjoy his time in the water - as with most new things for Will, it took a while for him to get his confidence up. Will can actually swim well and does a beautiful breaststroke (pizza arms!), but doesn't have the confidence to do it for very long! He has been learning back and front kicking with a board to get ready to move onto backstroke and crawl, and has recently started adding the arm movements.


A big milestone for Will has been getting him confident under the water, but with the aid of a few sinking pool toys, he now dives to retrieve them beautifully. Both boys love it when we throw the toys to the furthest ends of the pool and send them off in search of a particular colour.




We have noticed that Will needs to keep going to the pool regularly to keep his skills and confidence up, as opposed to Ella and James who just throw themselves straight back into it after an absence, so I am looking forward to lots of visits to the Dunbar pool once we get back.

James has been our real star - progressing from non-swimmer to fully-fledged crawl and backstroke swimmer - this is a picture of him doing crawl, proper breathing and all, which is better than his mother can do... He can't do 'pizza arms' as well as Will yet, but I guess everyone has a natural stroke they feel more comfortabe with, and James' is crawl. He is absolutely at home in, on or under the water, and, when not actually swimming, is usually to be found doing underwater handstands or somersaults. Or trying to dive, but our efforts to eliminate the comedy belly flop have been less than successful!

We will really miss Geelong Aquatic Centre - both for the quality of teaching and also for the fact that we have all four children accommodated in simultaneous lessons. I don't think we'll be able to manage that in Scotland.