Water safety is the number one objective in this summer swim program. Our idea of water safety involves not only a healthy understanding of the risks that accompany water but also supervised exposure to it. Through repetition in an interactive environment, children can “soak up” good water safety habits and become as comfortable in water as they are on dry land.

One of our beliefs here at YardSwim is to encourage safe, fun play.  This is very important to a swimmer’s development.  Learning to swim should be fun. When a student is having fun, they want to learn more. We use fun to help students progress through their swimming skills.

One on one instruction helps students to learn. YardSwim believes that a swim lesson should have no more than three students every 30 minutes. This way each child can receive the necessary amount of attention during every class. Four students or more means that there might be too much “down time” in between turns and the swim lessons may become boring for the students involved and chaotic for the instructor teaching the class. Our YardSwim instructors work with small classes and teach to each individual swimmer for a number of reasons.

Individualized teaching is good for you. Since YardSwim instructors are trained to teach individually to each student, they can teach any class no matter what combination of students are “pooled”. There can be a Level 1 student (working on floats) in the same lesson as a Level 4 student (working on strokes). In another lesson there can be two Level 3 students both working together on freestyle. It doesn’t matter, because in either case both students will be receiving the same teaching style. Since several different levels can be taught in the same lesson, then lessons can be grouped together to save on time and money. Lessons can also be scheduled more easily this way.

YardSwim bases its teaching style on the belief that children learn skills faster when presented with a multitude of short increments of learning repeated many times in a row. 10 one minute turns are more effective then 2 five minute turns. This is mostly because of children's attention spans. They have short attention spans and the younger they are the shorter the attention span. Children can also have a difficult time retaining information. To help students concentrate and remember it is important to keep turns short and repetitive.

Individualized teaching is good for everyone but it was designed to help swimmers learn. Students, especially young ones, need repetitive teaching to help master a skill or improve on speed. With two or more students in a class, the instructor will have to rotate to meet each individual's needs. This rotation helps to give students "down time". During this "down time" students can either play or practice newly learned skills. If they are playing and having fun during the swim lessons, then they are more willing to do their swimming and more willing to be challenged. If they are practicing newly learned swim skills on their own, then they are developing confidence and independence. Either way the students are benefitting from short amounts of down time.

A structured swim lesson is vital to a child's development both inside and outside of the pool. A swim student must abide by certain rules so that they are safe and learning. If a student is allowed to leave the pool at any time for any reason then they will not pay attention to the instructor who is trying to help them learn. Also, getting in and out of a pool many times can be dangerous. If a child were to slip and fall they might hurt themselves or others in the lesson. The rule then becomes "stay in the pool until the lesson is over" or let your instructor know that you need to leave to go to the bathroom, get a toy, or go see Mom and Dad. A structured lesson is a safe lesson and beneficial lesson.

Most swimmers who are taught by YardSwim instructors are preschoolers. Since they have not been to school yet they might not know much about concepts like having to wait their turn, sharing with others, or being separated from Mom or Dad. Most children are excited about swimming, therefore the lesson can be used as a positive introduction to structure. This can then also influence other classes and structured activities that the swimmer will be exposed to outside of the pool.

In short, swim lessons are a very good thing for any age.  It is important to learn water safety for all ages.  YardSwim is here to help provide access to these philosophies. Through our highly trained and mobile instructors we can help to share these ideas and swim lesson concepts with you. We believe in our philosophies and hope that they can influence you and your family to stay safe. We look forward to helping as much as we can to give you and your family a safe and more enjoyable summer. So throw away the floaties and let’s turn that backyard pool into a swimming school.