Aquatics 2 – From 12 to 18 months

These courses take into account the age and increasing ability of a baby to communicate, co-ordinate and move more independently off the parent. The 25 moves progress through to playful activities making learning fun through games and little stories, more use is made of props such as woggles and small floating toys as babies become more independent and keen to explore the water environment for themselves. Parents are also shown how to progress to swimming with their infants “riding along” in safety, making swimming a fun and rewarding experience for both, learning to jump in from the side, moving with confidence in the pool.

Infants gradually progress with their aquatic breathing and start to learn breath control – at your pace. The lessons do not focus on repeated submersion and forcing children under the water for longer periods of time as we believe this to be entirely detrimental to the purpose of water confidence as this can potentially have a negative effect.

Awareness of buoyancy is another very important safety skill that we focus on, we encourage parents to let go, very gradually of their infant and build up this skill. This is so they become aware of how the water pushes you naturally back to the surface to float. Once a child discovers their own buoyancy, they become more confident and safer, in and around water.

We also teach babies lifesaving skills in case they ever did find themselves in water alone which could save their lives until help gets to them. From Infant Aquatics 2 they will be taught the skill of rolling onto their backs to float, rest and breath. They learn to maintain this position until help arrives.

Aquatics 2- 4 years

Adult & Child classes are structured so that children and a parent/guardian are in the water together. These classes are for children who are very young and need help with understanding instruction, or who may need to gain confidence in water and who have not had any structured swimming lessons .

The goal of Infant Aquatics is to boost water confidence through play and natural learning rather than conventional teaching techniques. It is a great bonding experience for parent and child and encourages your child’s natural inquisitiveness and sense of exploration as well as developing muscle tone and motor skills.

Parents are encouraged to tune into their Infants subtle reactions to being in the water. Our common goal is enjoyment and water safety. We encourage “water wisdom” and parents to become water safety teachers to their children. It is about developing trust and confidence with your child in the water. Parents should give out signals that “I help you all the time”, “You can trust me” and “We do it together”. Our aim is to attract infants towards developing their water skills, rather than imposing upon them, this creates an atmosphere of connection and trust.

The moves progress through to playful activities making learning fun through games and songs, we make use of props such as coloured balls, floating shapes, toys to make learning more fun. We start to include Aquatic circuits which encourages the child to kick, dip, swim, submerge or swim under water depending on their ability. We progress with teaching infants their kicking actions, encouraging them to float on their front or back and kick and paddle through the water. Infants progress with the sequence of Swim, rotate to back and breath, flip back to front, until they reach the safety of the side and for those not confident we use swim discs to help children become more independent and to help with learning to stay on top of the water whilst swimming, swim discs are gradually reduced until they are competent to float and swim without.