Back in November we started Evan in swimming lessons again, and this time Emma was also going to be in class too! She started in "Turtles", which is the beginner level for preschool age kids. Evan took this class a few years ago as his first class (sans parents). Emma was pretty excited about it. She'd seen Evan in his classes so many times before so there must have been some familiarity to the process for her. Her teacher on her first day was a female named Sarah, and Emma seemed to do really well in class. In fact, she seemed so comfortable in the water that she often wandered pretty far away from her teacher. After class, we told her to stay closer to her teacher next time, but otherwise, all went well. The photos below tell the rest of that story.
Before class, very excited for her first swimming lessons!
Wrapped up after her first class
Subsequent Classes
After the first class went so well, I was surprised to see a quick change in the 2nd class. However, the teacher she had the first week was just a substitute, and her real teacher was a boy named Peter. He was a nice kid, but for some reason Emma didn't warm up to him. She was pretty timid and didn't participate as much in that second class.
By her third class, she started saying she didn't want to go even before we got to the pool. She cried and refused to go in the water for the class. I didn't know what to do. It wasn't that she was afraid of the pool, but it was her nervousness around the new teacher that was holding her back. The swimming director came over and helped us at this point, suggesting that maybe if I wasn't right there she'd be more brave to go in. So I decided to give this a try and I told her I had to go off to the bathroom. While I was away, she got in and while she didn't want to go with Peter, she did want to go to a different, female teacher. She was in the pool for a short time and then she started crying again though, so it was a short lesson.
By the 4th lesson, we decided for her to try going with the female teacher, who was teaching an "Alligators" class (the next class after Turtles). She was still pretty shy, but she lasted the whole class, but just didn't participate too much.
The following weekend we went to the indoor pool and worked with her on putting her face in the water, but also on just having fun in the pool. The swimming director was there and Emma wanted to show her how she'd learned to put her face in the water. Emma had definitely warmed up to her! Anyway, after that Emma continued to participate in the Alligators class, and the director said it was fine if we wanted to just enroll her in Alligators for next time anyway since Emma was meeting the main rule for passing--face under water.
Standing on the edge ready to jump in, and then just after jumping in
Practicing "monster arms" (i.e. front crawl)
Thus, the next month (December) she was in Alligators, and with the same teacher too, so that helped her not be so timid. She was doing really well, but still not putting her entire head under water, and sometimes was covering her face with her hands before putting her face in. We've since worked with her on that and now she goes down without covering her face.
This past month (January) Emma just completed her 3rd session of swimming lessons, again in Alligators. She had a different, yet female, teacher and usually took the first 5-10 minutes of class to warm up, but then participated in classes fairly well. She still needs to work on her front and back floats to be able to pass Alligators, but at least she got a tick mark for doing 5 bobs! We're going to take a break from swimming now, as Emma wants to take dance class. (I'm really looking forward to this too!) :) But what a whirlwind she went though...having gone from not being willing to get in the pool at all to doing great and essentially passing out of Turtles in the first go, all in a matter of just a few weeks!
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