Puddle Ducks lessons have key lifesaving and personal survival skills threaded through every lesson from our youngest babies to our older Swim Academy children.
Why do we teach water safety skills?
We are teaching skills through a variety of activities to ensure children know what to do if they find themselves in difficulty in the water. In teaching these skills to your children from as young an age as possible, they become second nature, and if the worst was to happen and they were to fall into water, they would instinctively know what to do.
Some of the activities we teach throughout our programmes include:
- Turning in the water and reaching to hold onto the wall/float
- Call out for help in the water
- Rolling off the float and re-surfacing to hold onto the float
- Kicking to the surface
- Blowing bubbles so as to not take on any water
- Crab walking along the side of the pool to safety
One key part of our lessons is teaching our Puddle Ducks the importance of safe entry and exits from the water. Learning to ‘Wait’ until a parent/guardian is with them before entering water is key to keep them safe. Even our youngest babies wait for the parent to enter the pool, we also teach safe swivel entry into the pool, holding hands whilst walking down steps and waiting for parents/guardians before exiting a pool. In every programme our babies and children are not allowed into or out of the water until instructed to by the teacher.
Keeping our little one’s safe around water when on holiday is always at the forefront of every parents mind, our head office put together this blog on Holiday Swimming Tips.
https://www.puddleducks.com/blog/holiday-swimming-tips
What some of our Teachers say about their favourite activities:
Jo said she loves ‘Shout out for help’ activity during our Water Safety Awareness week, Jo said “ I love how their confidence can grow each time as it starts off as a whisper and by the end of the activity the shouts are very loud and clear”
Elle who is new to the team says she loves ‘Jumping from the wall/float and turning and reaching back”, Elle said “it helps our swimmers learn to make their way to a point of safety if they accidently fell in to the water”
Suzanne our Franchisee loves ‘Starfish Floating’, Suzanne said “it’s such a simple activity and I love seeing children start to understand their own buoyancy and how it could help them if they get into difficulties in the water”
Water Safety Awareness Week:
3 times a year Puddle Ducks Worcestershire holds our Water Safety Awareness Weeks, dedicated weeks where our focus is on Water Safety Awareness and teaching our children (and parents too!) the importance of being safe around water, what to do if the worst was to happen.
At some of the pools during these weeks we encourage parents and children to wear their PJ’s. This gives those swimmers a regular session where the babies/children are exposed to the feeling of being in the water with their clothes on. We do not positively encourage our swimmers to jump into the water whenever they can, fully clothed – quite the opposite – it is a controlled and safe environment to provide them with the opportunity to see how it would feel to be in the water, following an accidental submersion/fall into water, showing them that they can still swim and uses their skills.