Teaching your child how to swim-Beginning games

If you havent read part 1 of this series, which should help identify what level your child is, read it HERE!

Teach your kid how to swim-Beginning Dunking games

I have many years of experience teaching children how to swim, and the biggest obstacle that could stand in the way of their development is their fear of going underwater. I have seen all ages of people scared to dunk their head in the water. Being comfortable in the water is the first step to teaching anybody how to swim.

Now I have found that the easiest ways to get your children comfortable with water is too make it a game. There are a couple of different “dunking games” that I play depending on the child’s ability.

Hold your breath.

The first one of course, is every child’s favorite-the breath holding competition. This is for the beginning swimming child, you can play the game with your child or you can borrow one of his/her friends and have them play with him/her.

Grab the rings.

For the swimming child with a little more experience I will throw rings, or any sinkable object down to the bottom of the pool and see which child gets the most. If the child gets the most they “win”, I would always give the winner more free time at the end of each lesson but a piece of candy would work im sure.

Ring around the Rosie.

If I have a lot of children in the lesson, I would have them play ring around the Rosie in the shallow end of a pool, when they say POP goes the Rosie, they would all dunk in the pool.

The point of these games is to get your child to be excited about going to the pool, if you start them out with games that get them comfortable it will be much easier to teach your children strokes, Believe me.

After your child is noteicable comfortable in the water you can start teaching them floating drills HERE! and then you can begin on SWIMMING LESSONS HERE!. Be sure to give them a few minutes each lesson to play games.