A couple of days after we got home from vacation, Joseph started his two weeks of swim lessons at the nearby YMCA.
He was in a class with another 3 year old and some other girl that was several years older and a much more advanced swimmer (still don't know why she was in a class with 3 year olds). Joseph's teacher was Miss Kathy. The first day of lessons I was kinda nervous how he would do being away from me. All the parents sit on the deck around the indoor pool so I was glad to not be far away. He did good though! The first lesson he kept getting out of the water to run over and give me a little hug. So after that, we made a point to do a big goodbye hug and he was good with that. :)
I thought Joseph did well in his swim lessons, given the structure of the class. Luckily, he has always been very comfortable in the water which I think is the biggest goal at this age. It's tricky because I taught swim lessons for many years during high school and college...and I taught the preschool age quite often. We followed the American Red Cross swim curriculum which I realize now had such a good schedule to get the kids comfortable in the water and to become familiar with basic swim skills. So I guess given my background, I wasn't overly impressed with the structure of the swim lessons at the Y. The teacher was sweet but really every class was the exact same and all they ever did was work on kicking feet, blowing bubbles and working on swim hands/arms. I was hoping for some practice on floating on tummy and back and more techniques in practicing the other skills.
But having said all that, I did feel like Joseph progressed in his kicking and using his arms. The teacher also started pushing him more and more to go under water as he was kicking back to the steps and he did good with that. The other little boy in the class would get upset anytime he went under and didn't like getting his eyes wet so I was glad to see that Joseph got a little more used to going under the water.
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| Ready for swim lessons |
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| Ready to go practice with Ms. Kathy |
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| Kicking and blowing bubbles |
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| On his way back, practicing his arms (or ice cream scoops as they call them) ;) |
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| A little push from the teacher as he goes under water some on his way back |
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| All smiles! |
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| He got 2 stickers on his swim chart for skills he completed |
1 comment:
Oh yay! He looks like he did so good! I'm glad he had a good first experience. He looks so happy and all smiles! In his cute "happy shark shorts" as Luke calls his! Yay Jofie!
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