Just like that, Spring
turned into Summer - bringing with it temperatures creeping into the
mid-thirties and UV indexes that try to outdo themselves daily. And so
has begun the season of gorging on strawberries, peaches and mangoes and
drowning ourselves in sunblock. Summer has also heralded a new
ambitious swim schedule for our family.
While I have always felt that swim lessons were really important for children, these past few months I have mostly talked about how our children should be in lessons without doing much about it. Really there are only so many after school activities a parent can handle chauffeuring children to. And Sophia so desperately wants to swim, and advocates to go to the pool most weekends, and tries really hard to get someone's undivided attention to help her practice. To her credit, her efforts have paid off in time for Summer and she can now make her way across a pool without drowning. Even so, when our local outdoor pool opened for the season I jumped on the chance of their weekend lessons. Sophia was so excited the first day that despite the water being a cool 22 degrees at the end she informed us that she would like to have a swim lesson every day. While her demands were not met, Jakob has been great about taking them to swim whenever he is off work.
Aurora did not request everyday swim lessons but as it happens she just began her school's swim program which involves going to the pool every single day for two weeks. I applaud the teachers for their courage and patience in getting herds of eight year olds changed, onto a bus, into the pool, back again and changed every day while still trying to teach them things before and after. But, I am so happy that the capital territory has a swim program for kids because as an inland city I have often felt my children were missing out of all the ocean swimming instruction offered for Australian children.
While I haven't observed it first hand, I was given a detailed packet describing the swimming course objectives and have been receiving daily updates from Aurora. The objective of swimming every day is not to teach children to swim but to teach them water safety and rescue in a diverse set of situations to prepare them for the Summer. The kids are taught useful things such as getting into a body of water safely, ways of swimming with a life jacket on, how to rescue drowning friends, what to do if you are in trouble, what to do after falling out of a boat (yes they get to fall out of an inflatable boat!), and my personal favorite, how to react when falling unexpectedly into water - including how to take off your clothes in water (not sure I even know how to do this). Jakob and I have definitely not provided our children with instruction in any of these areas so I am happy that the government has taken the initiative. And now that our children smell perpetually like swimming pool and sunblock there is no denying that it is summer in Australia.
While I have always felt that swim lessons were really important for children, these past few months I have mostly talked about how our children should be in lessons without doing much about it. Really there are only so many after school activities a parent can handle chauffeuring children to. And Sophia so desperately wants to swim, and advocates to go to the pool most weekends, and tries really hard to get someone's undivided attention to help her practice. To her credit, her efforts have paid off in time for Summer and she can now make her way across a pool without drowning. Even so, when our local outdoor pool opened for the season I jumped on the chance of their weekend lessons. Sophia was so excited the first day that despite the water being a cool 22 degrees at the end she informed us that she would like to have a swim lesson every day. While her demands were not met, Jakob has been great about taking them to swim whenever he is off work.
Aurora did not request everyday swim lessons but as it happens she just began her school's swim program which involves going to the pool every single day for two weeks. I applaud the teachers for their courage and patience in getting herds of eight year olds changed, onto a bus, into the pool, back again and changed every day while still trying to teach them things before and after. But, I am so happy that the capital territory has a swim program for kids because as an inland city I have often felt my children were missing out of all the ocean swimming instruction offered for Australian children.
While I haven't observed it first hand, I was given a detailed packet describing the swimming course objectives and have been receiving daily updates from Aurora. The objective of swimming every day is not to teach children to swim but to teach them water safety and rescue in a diverse set of situations to prepare them for the Summer. The kids are taught useful things such as getting into a body of water safely, ways of swimming with a life jacket on, how to rescue drowning friends, what to do if you are in trouble, what to do after falling out of a boat (yes they get to fall out of an inflatable boat!), and my personal favorite, how to react when falling unexpectedly into water - including how to take off your clothes in water (not sure I even know how to do this). Jakob and I have definitely not provided our children with instruction in any of these areas so I am happy that the government has taken the initiative. And now that our children smell perpetually like swimming pool and sunblock there is no denying that it is summer in Australia.
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| This is a happy child |
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| Sophia sunbathing with pistachios while Aurora swims laps |
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