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Giving your kids the opportunity to take part in a school holiday swimming program is a great way to foster solid swimming foundations for the year to come. It also gets your kids into the pool at a low-pressure time of year, when it’s less likely they’ll be rushed and more likely they’ll enjoy themselves.
School holiday swimming programs offer the same type of swimming lessons as those offered during the rest of the year, but in an intensive format—with a lesson every day rather than waiting a week between lessons.
Why is a school holiday swimming program beneficial?
There are a number of benefits to taking intensive swimming lessons during school holidays. Here are some.
Holidays are when swim skills are most needed
Let’s face it, kids spend more time at beaches, rivers and pools during holidays than they generally do during the rest of the year. This means the risk of mishaps happening in the water, and potential drowning, is greater.
The fresher a child’s learning of swim safety skills the better when it comes to avoiding water risks. Learning water safety skills during the holidays, or refreshing pre-existing knowledge, is a great addition to keeping your kids secure at a time when they are frequently exposed to the potential dangers in and around the water. Because you attend the classes with your child, it’s also a great reminder for parents to be constantly vigilant in monitoring your child around water.
Intensive learning has unique benefits
Whilst learning swimming skills over a term, via weekly lessons, is a great way to slowly build skills, there are particular benefits to intensive learning in short timeframes.
Intensive swimming lessons in school holidays can help if your child’s skills have stayed the same for a while. An intensive sees them building additional skills each day, and because they return to the pool the next day, they’re able to remember the new tips and tricks they learned the day prior, and build on their learning.
Daily swimming lessons mean they not only learn new skills, but they are practising them daily, and absorbing the training in the body. Muscle memory can have a great influence on your child retaining swimming skills, as well as relying on mental memory.
Over the course of the week of a swimming intensive, your child will feel the improvement. When there’s a gap in between, whilst your child may be becoming a better swimmer, it’s harder for them to notice those very gradual improvements. An intensive gives them that good feeling, and adds to their confidence.
Your kids need physical activity
Physical activity is vital to your child’s development. Life Education recommends that from ages 1 through to 5, your child should have a minimum of 3 hours a day of aerobic activity. Even infants under 1 should have 30 minutes per day.
Kids over 5 are recommended to have at least 60 minutes per day of aerobic activity, with swimming being one such recommended activity.
Rather than have your kids sit on the couch gaming or watching TV, how about getting them to the pool instead these holidays? You can rest assured it’ll do wonders for their physical development.
Exercise can improve brain development
It’s not just physical development that improves with exercise. Exercise also improves brain development. For instance, it’s been found that a sport session of moderate intensity can have a positive effect on associative memory.
In addition, a 2020 study by neuroscientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) demonstrated that “an intensive physical exercise session as short as 15 minutes improves memory, including the acquisition of new motor skills.”
More intense physical effort was found to increase endocannabinoid levels, which increase synaptic activity and help activate the brain, resulting in better brain performance. “The higher the level (of endocannabinoids) after intense physical effort, the more the brain is activated and the better the brain’s performance.”
For this reason, swimming may have benefits beyond just what’s happening for your child’s body as a whole. Your child may experience benefits in terms of brain development from those swimming experiences. And with brain performance and associative memory being enhanced, all areas of your child’s learning can be improved.
Intensive swimming lessons in school holidays are a great way to get the ball rolling on this, and will help set your child up for a more physically active year ahead.
It enhances social skills and confidence and adds fun!
Learning in a group during a school holiday program is a great way for kids to make new friends. It’s also a great activity for existing friends to do something meaningful together.
Let’s not forget to mention that school holiday swimming programs are fun, and give your kids something to look forward to as the holidays approach. They also help parents out by having a structured activity in the holiday plan, rather than wondering each day how to occupy your kids.
What swimming lessons do Kingswim offer in the holidays?
Kingswim’s school holiday program is known as the Fast Track program. It’s very similar to our regular weekly lesson program for kids, except it runs over four days.
Individual Fast Track lessons run for the same duration as regular lessons:
- K1 – K9 30 minutes: Independent and Competent Level
- K10 – 45 minutes: Graduate
- K11 – 1 hour: Graduate
What happens on the Fast Track school holiday swimming program?
The skills we cover during the year are taught in an intensive form over multiple days.
On Day 1, your child receives a very warm welcome to Kingswim and the Fast Track program. We identify your little one’s swim skills and match them to the most suitable program level, (those already in a Kingswim program go into their current level). Instructors will spend the session helping the children focus on the core skills needed to complete their current K-level, whatever that may be.
Day 2 gives you the opportunity to learn the milestones for your child’s K-level, so you can understand what they’re learning and how you can support them. Skills are worked on and improved, and milestones reinforced. Here is where we give kids the ongoing encouragement we know they need to work through sticking points and technique gaps. Our support helps them gain that extra confidence in the pool.
Day 3 is dedicated to practising skills, so your child can work towards the next level. Supervisors are on hand, giving close attention to each child, providing feedback to parents, and introducing what’s in the next level. This is a great way to work towards a whole new set of skills, and to help prepare children further for their regular lessons. (In saying that, reaching the next level involves absolutely no pressure whatsoever! Whilst we do include assessments, fun and learning new skills are the main points of focus of the Fast Track program, and if your child is not ready to move up a level, there’s no issue.)
For Day 4 of Fast Track, more focused water safety, survival and rescue skills are explored. Your child will receive a solid grounding on how to be safe around water, and at the end, will be chuffed to receive their Fast Track program certificate!
So, if you like the idea of your child doing some intensive swimming lessons, school holidays are the perfect time to fit them in. Not only will your little one have a lot of fun and meet new friends, they will also feel a great sense of achievement which will further boost their interest in swimming, and hopefully set them up for a lifetime of enjoyment in the pool.
For more information on Kingswim’s school holiday swim programs, see our Fast Track page. And for any other questions, big or small, you can make an enquiry here.
