Make Swim Progress at Home
"How can we practice at home?" is a question we get all the time from parents. We talked to our General Managers and they gave us some of their best at home tips for your swimmers.
Baby Blue
When it comes to getting your baby comfortable with water, a lot of the practice is conditioning at home. Taylor, the General Manager of Wilmette says he talks a lot about mimicking, especially for balloon face. Hold your infant's hands while you make a the balloon face, and allow the baby to "pop" the balloon. Making it exciting and fun with your reaction will motivate the infant to laugh and want it done to them. Then do the same gesture to baby during bath time, and pour water from the back of the head to the front.
Monkey Walking is another easy skill to practice at home, says Taylor. Our Baby Blue 1 and 2 swimmers are just learning to walk and are using table ledges or couches to practice. Use their favorite toy to encourage them to go across the ledge and work on their grip strength. Doing that out of the water, Taylor explains, is a lot harder with no bounancy.
Our General Manager at Buffalo Grove, Leslie, recommends working on the back float in the tub. It will help get the Baby Blue swimmers get used to laying back with the water around their ears.
Bright Blue
Tonya, our General Manager at Niles, suggests that for kids who have a hard time putting their face in the water to start with a shower with running water from behind the head, and graduate to a shower with running water on the face. Since we encourage kids to use goggles in lessons, this could be a great time to introduce goggles for your swimmer to get comfortable with them.
She then says once the swimmer is comfortable with water on their face then it is time to work on getting the whole face in the water up to their ears and goggles can be used again if they'd like.
Bold Blue
Our Hoffman Estates General Manager, Sheila, has a couple great tips for our Bold Blue swimmers she likes to tell parents.
Her first go-to tip is to practice blowing bubbles in the bathtub for 3 seconds, take a quick breath and then blow bubbles for another 3 seconds.
Our Bold Blue swimmers are also learning to keep their legs straight while kicking, which is when you will see some of our swimmers sitting on the edge of the pool practicing their kicking. Kids can do the same at home with their legs off the side of a bed or couch. Remember to encourage straight legs and pointed toes!
Our Chicago- North Center General Manager, Katrina also recommends on practicing the correct position for side breathing. Check out the photos below of one of our swimmers practicing in the water and how to practice out of the water.
