Lucia's Swimming Lessons

Lucia took three sessions of swimming lessons this summer, her first time ever in lessons! Since I am working, we did them all in the evening at SW Community Center near our home. She started in the Goldfish class and was immediately passed up to Penguin. After two sessions in Penguin, however, she still has not quite mastered the solo back float (she refuses to let the teacher let go, and immediately puts her legs down when the teacher does so), and she is only 50-50 at putting her entire face in the water to blow bubbles through her nose when going out on an assisted out/back front crawl. Still, for the first time in lessons, we're very proud of her! I'm sure she'll do great when we get her in lessons again.

As for logistics, the summer lessons are two weeks straight Monday - Friday for 30 minutes per day. This was somewhat hectic for our family, trying to eat a "family" dinner at 5:50 then Lucia and I booking it out the door by 6 or shortly thereafter to get to the lessons for a 6:15 start time. Alex took Lucia at least once per session, and Ama and Apa got their share a few times too. Lucia only missed two and a half sessions, one (or one half) each of the two weeks, and was rarely late (amazingly!). We also did two weeks on, two weeks off all summer, so she attended the 1st, 3rd, and 5th of 5 available sessions. Interestingly, the classes grew sparser as the weeks went on, and I was even able to sign her up for the last session only a week or so beforehand, whereas the first and third (her second) sessions I had to sign up for in April to get her in.

Lucia had a blast, and I look forward to when Magdalena can take lessons too. The ones that start with Goldfish are for 3-6 year old kids and there are four: Goldfish, Penguin, Otter, and Seal. Since Magdalena will be *almost* three next summer, I'm hoping to get her in anyway. Thinking back to how mature Lucia was last summer, I'm sure Magdalena will be able to do it - and will probably LOVE it too!

Here are some photos capturing Lucia's lessons:



Backfloat:

From Blog All Five

Arm Practice:

From Blog All Five

Assisted front crawl:

From Blog All Five

Swimming to the side:

From Blog All Five

Cutie in the pool!

From Blog All Five

A short clip of Lucia coming down the big slide on her last day (the last day of lessons all the kids get to go down the slide! Plus, Lucia got popcorn on the last day of each session, so that was a big treat too!) - note: you don't actually see her until about 17 seconds into this 22 second clip...!