Teaching a Child to Swim to the Steps

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Samantha with Sharks and Minnows Swim School and Brianna and I are going to show you a couple of the ways that we practice swimming to the steps. What we’re going to do first is show her how to kick her feet. So you want to make sure that when you’re kicking your feet or when you’re having your child kick their feet, that their legs are relatively straight. Brianna can you put your legs out straight? And that their feet are floppy, we want them to do small fast kicks just under the surface of the water. Very good, flop your feet up and down, up and down, perfect. Some of the ways that you can get your child kicking are playing games and one game that we like to play is red light, green light. So what we’re going to do is have her put her feet out straight and we’re going to use our rings as steering wheels. Where do you want to drive? I like to drive to a forest. To a forest, we’re going to a forest. Okay so turn your car on, put your steering wheel up straight and when I say green light, I want to see the small fast kicks. Ready? Green light, go! Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, beautiful. Make your feet really floppy, perfect. Okay let me see yellow light kicks, slow kicks. You can use this time to evaluate if you’re child’s kicks are proper or if their knees are bent. Very good, okay green light go, fast kicks! Perfect, okay red light stop! Now that they’ve got the kicking down you want to teach them about the arms. There’s a couple of different ways you can teach your child how to properly move their arms in the water but basically we want an over arm motion, like a freestyle. So what we’re going to do with Brianna is we’re going to pick apples. Brianna where do apples grow? In the tree. In the trees, up high right? So let’s reach one arm way up high in the tree and pick a apple and put in your pocket and in the other arm way up in that tree, pick a apple and put in your pocket and then the other arm, very good and another one, perfect. Another thing you can do is scoop ice cream. Brianna what kind of ice cream do you like? Vanilla. Vanilla, so we’re going to pretend this whole pool is full of vanilla ice cream and we’re going to use our scoopers to scoop it all up, let’s do it. Scoop, scoop, scoop, perfect! Very good, let’s eat our ice cream and can we wash it off? Wash it off, very good, this is another way you can get them comfortable with their face getting wet. So once they understand what to do with their arms and what to do with their feet we can have them practice by swimming to the steps. Are you ready to try it? So you want to start off far enough that they have room to swim but not too far. They can usually hold their breath for about 5 or 6 or 7 seconds. Are you ready to swim to the steps? Picking apples and kicking, go 1, 2, 3. Again you want to make sure the feet are up and that the head is down. Good job!"