Swimming Lessons

Swimming is not only fun but also an essential life skill for your children to learn. Drowning is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and is the second-leading cause of unintentional injury death among children, and the sixth for people of all ages.

To help keep your children safe around water, it’s crucial to enroll them in high-quality swimming lessons. Learning to swim equips children with vital survival skills and techniques to prevent exhaustion in the water. The best time to start is as early as one year old, as infant swimming lessons can significantly reduce the risk of drowning as your child grows.

CLASS LEVELS AND DESCRIPTIONS

Water Tots: Swimming classes for infants involve both children and parents. While infants can display basic swimming movements, they are too young to swim independently, making it important to enroll in a parent-child class. In our Water Tots class, we focus on building fundamental water safety skills for both parents and children. This class helps parents instill water safety knowledge and skills in their children safely and effectively. It's not about speeding up the learning process but about creating a culture of safety and comfort in and around the water. These classes are a great way to introduce your child to the water in a fun, playful environment, building readiness skills and water safety awareness.

Pre-K Swimming Lessons: Designed for children starting at age 3, these lessons help develop comfort and competence in the water. In Preschool Aquatics, the instructor builds a trusting relationship with each student, encouraging them to be away from their guardian and actively participate in the class. All skills are initially performed with assistance, but many students quickly progress. Basic water safety skills and rules are also taught to enhance water safety knowledge.

Level 1: At this stage, students work on developing comfort and confidence in the water. They are taught at their own pace, with the goal of ensuring they are safe in and around water. While all skills are performed with assistance, students must demonstrate confidence in their abilities to progress to the next level. The focus is on helping swimmers perform skills with minimal assistance or independently for a set time or distance.

Level 2: In this level, more activities and drills are introduced to foster independence in swimmers. Although comfortable in the water, these swimmers have limited independent swimming abilities. This level builds on the skills learned in Level 1, such as floating, gliding, and basic arm and leg actions. To advance from Level 2, swimmers must be able to swim independently on their front and back for 5 meters and float on their back for 15 seconds, along with meeting other skill checkpoints.

Level 3: Swimmers in this level are challenged to swim greater distances and are introduced to a variety of different strokes, with a focus on the four competitive strokes: Butterfly, Backstroke, Breaststroke, and Freestyle/Front Crawl. The emphasis is not only on becoming stronger swimmers but also safer ones. More advanced water safety skills are discussed, including how to use these skills to help keep others safe.

Level 4: Building on the progress made in Level 3, swimmers are pushed to swim even greater distances. The different swimming strokes are further analyzed and refined, with continued emphasis on the four competitive strokes. Swimmers begin learning advanced techniques to enhance their speed and efficiency in the water. Advanced water safety skills are also covered, emphasizing their importance in keeping both themselves and others safe.

PRIVATE LESSONS

We offer private swim lessons at Waterloo Pool, which can be conveniently scheduled through Rec Desk. Please follow the instructions below to book your private lesson.

1. Please go to denison.recdesk.com and login. If you do not have an account, you will need to register at this time.
2. After registration click on the tab that says POOL. Then on the drop down click on Private Swim Lessons.
3. The instructors’ names will come up and if they have a green reserve button next to their name then they have Private Lessons available.  
4. Click on each date and choose the times that you would like to come. You will add them to your cart. In the description line add the name of the student and how many students in that lesson. (You may share a lesson with a sibling for additional $5 per lesson) The class times are 30 min increments. If the instructor has room, you can book the whole hour by adding to your cart.
5. After adding your classes in you can add additional classes or check out.