Labor Day has come and gone and that was the day that our townhouse community's pool closes for the season. The last few weeks has been too cool on the weekends to swim, so I'm sad to say that none of our children have completed their swim training. In fact, it is becoming more apparent to me that my husband and I should not be the ones to teach them to swim. I am going to look into swim classes this winter because the children are more apt to follow an instructor's directions and not say "I don't want to" when asked to put their head underwater.
Being part of the 2012 SwimWays Swim Team has allowed our children to become far more comfortable in a pool than they were at the beginning of the summer. They have had so much fun being part of this program. SwimWays even sent them personalized "Olympic" medals as keepsakes for being part of the team. I cannot tell you how thrilled they were to see their names on the backs of these medals and how proud they were to wear them.
(Click any photo to enlarge)
In August, we had received this Marvel Kickboard at my request. Our 8-1/2 year old son and 5-1/2 year old daughter appeared to prefer holding onto something while swimming. Since it would hinder their independence if they were always holding onto to my husband and I, we wanted to try a kickboard. It turned out that they both loved using it, so we purchased two more. Our 5-1/2 year old son wanted nothing to do with it. He was the one that I thought would complete his swim training first, but he regressed to preferring to sit on the pool steps rather than holding onto us to swim around. I never would have predicted that to happen since he was having so much fun in the water at the beginning of the summer.
Our last chance to swim this summer actually took place at a local state park. I had assumed that the kickboard and other swim toys were not allowed in the lake, so I regretfully left them at home. It turned out that almost every young child there had a kickboard.
The children still had fun in the water though. By early afternoon, the sun came out and the water was warm enough to play in. We just practiced floating a bit, but there was not much swim training going on since it was quite crowded.
The lake was much different than the pool. The ground was rocky, there were fish in the water, and there were waves from the wind.
Our oldest, who had resisted putting his face in the water all summer long, finally did so while wearing goggles. He thought it was the coolest thing to be able to see the floor of the lake and to catch a glimpse of a fish now and then.
If the swim courses work out, I will update again about our children's swim training this winter. Thank you SwimWays for a great summer!
Thank you to SwimWays for providing complimentary product samples for us to base this review upon and for providing medals to our children as a thank you for their participation.
