After your family's amazing summer with FINS, it can become challenging to have your kids keep up with their swim skills. It becomes especially hard during the winter months where an outdoor pool is not available for use. Throughout this blog post, you will learn three helpful tips to aid in keeping swim skills fresh over the times that FINS is not operating.
Using the bathtub is a great way to practice swim skills and help your child continue to become more acclimated to water. Blowing bubbles and immersing the head under water are two key skills to practice.
Practice Bubbles: Having your kid blow bubbles in the bathtub with a parent supervising is a great approach to simulate a lesson. It can also be helpful if pool toys are introduced into the bath (ex. rings) which help make the bathtub setting become even more similar to a FINS swim lesson. Blowing bubbles in FINS swim lessons are crucial for having children eventually become comfortable with more advanced skills, such as jumping into the water and rolling onto the back. Ensuring that no water goes into your child’s nose while blowing bubbles will help keep your child calm and collected in the water during swim lessons.
Place the Head Under Water: Asking your child to fully submerge themselves under water can be helpful when becoming comfortable in the water outside of FINS. You can create a similar feel to a FINS swim lesson if the bath is a little colder than normal bathtub temperature. If your kid feels uncomfortable with putting their head under water at first, a good way to be more comfortable is by pouring water over their head during a bath. After you pour water over your child’s head, you can try again to have them put their head underwater. Another way to have your kid enjoy putting their head underwater is to have them “dive” for rings in the bath. Playing a game to “dive” for toys again simulates a lesson and makes them submerge their head under water.
Along with using the bathtub, aim to find ways to expose your child to larger bodies of water during the winter months by utilizing heated pools in the Nashville area.
Find a Heated Pool: After your fun summer at FINS has ended, a way to truly keep your skills fresh is to swim in a heated pool in the Nashville area. When your children continually work on their skills outside of FINS by swimming in an indoor pool, it helps our instructors immensely as your child can begin lessons where they ended last summer without having to review previously learned skills.
By using the bathtub and aiming to find a heated pool, your child will be able to practice swim lesson basics in order to keep skills fresh prior to participating in FINS swim lessons. Remember to use positive reinforcement by praising your child when they perform skills correctly and gently correct them in a warm tone of voice when giving tips for how to better perform skills.
