So far in Emily’s 3 years she has taken dance lessons and gymnastics. Gymnastics is more like a play session with gymnastic-type activities. Not sure about dance but I have a feeling it is more like a playgroup as well. For the most part 3-year olds can only handle so much structured learning. Both Patti and I want to have all of our kids try different things and one staple is swimming, so yesterday was day one of Emily’s 10-week indoor swimming lesson.
To start, Emily has been around the water since she was born. We belong to a pool during the summers plus she has been in the ocean, lakes and private pools. She is comfortable with the water and this past year we started to teach her how to float and hold her breath under water. So we looked around and found a program at Boston College that has multiple levels. Armed with her pink backpack with a towel and change of clothes, we set out on Sunday for her first lesson.
Overall it went very well. There are three different classes going on at the same time plus an open swim for adults. There were 5 kids in her class, all kids around the same age and skill level. They don’t like the parents being pool side so they have us site in the balcony spectator area. After about 5 minutes Emily looked around, saw me, and yelled “Hi daddy!”
The class is only 30 minutes which I think is about the attention span of most little kids. Emily kept looking over at the colorful floatation devices they use for other classes and kept asking the instructor if she could have one. It was actually pretty cute. The person who taught the class looked like a college age woman and she was helped out by the pool-side college age women who ran the program. Both were great with the little kids.
The class was pretty basic. She taught the kids to stick their face in the water, to float, and to kick the proper way. At one point near the end of the class the kids found out that the large pool area had a good echo and started to scream. I had to come down from the balcony and gave Emily the familiar vertical index finger in front of the lips signal to be quiet at which point she stopped yelling. Again, more cute than anything else. The only snag during the class was the end. The teacher let the kids jump from the edge of the pool into her arms and she let them do this twice. Emily wanted to do it more and got upset when I told her she could not. The frustrations of being a kid.
I wasn’t sure where I was going to change her out of her bathing suit because I didn’t really want to take her into the men’s changing room, but they have a family changing room so all anxiety was for nothing.
The class ends around dinner time so I was thinking of taking her to dinner after class next week. Maybe turn it into a little father-daughter activity.
So far week 1 of swimming lessons was a success.
Thought I’d share.
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