Swim Lessons

Last week, we started swim lessons again for the girls. Emily is now in level 4 and Caitlyn is starting level 3. I was confident that Emily was ready for level 4, but I was a little worried about Caitlyn. It seems that she only barely passed the requirements for moving out of level 3, but she is at the same level as the other kids in her class so I guess it is fine.

Emily is mostly refining some of the skills she learned last year (i.e. diving, side breathing, backstroke, etc.).  She is also working on some new ones like the butterfly and breast stroke. She is doing pretty good. I have no doubt that she will be able to move on to level 5 after this week. In fact, she is combined in her class with a couple of level 5 kids and she has no trouble keeping up with them.

 I was a bit worried when Caitlyn started lessons because while she is capable, she has not entirely conquered her fear of the water. On her first day, instead of reviewing their skills to see if all the kids were in the proper class, her teacher jumped in and had them start learning to dive and tread water, I didn't think it would go well. But she did good, I was pleasantly surprised. However, as the week progressed (and having a substitute on one of the days), she seemed to start to regress and seemed less confident and less willing to cooperate. She is doing better this week again but I don't think she will be moving up a level this time. In fact, if they do move her up, I may just re-enroll her in level 3 until she becomes more comfortable in the water. The level 4 kids do all their swimming in the deep end. There is no way she can handle that!

Both the girls are learning though and having fun, of course. We'll see what happens when their classes end this week. Hopefully we can get some practice in between. I would like to enroll them in one more session before the end of summer. 30 minutes a day for 4 days a week, for two weeks really isn't a whole lot of practice.

I did take them to swim at a friends' house on one day last week and ended up getting a parking ticket that costs more than their swim lessons so I will be wary about doing THAT again! It was street sweeping day and no one bothered to mention that fact to us! Anyway...Emily did get so much better in her dive there because she kept wanting me to go into the water with her but I stayed out with most of the moms since they didn't really need me in there and there were so many kids in the water. I told her if she did a good dive, I would go in (I didn't think she would be able to do it). But one thing about Emily is that she is tenacious when she wants something. I'll tell you, she dived in over and over and over again until she started to do them pretty well. After all that work, I couldn't not go in!