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Swimming ...
Every child who attends Acarath has a swim lesson every day. Only One class uses the pool at a time. Four swimming instructors are in the pool with one or two staff members on deck acting as lifeguards. Each child has the same teacher every day. Although Red Cross and YMCA progression lines were used in designing the swim program, these programs are not designed for children who swim 3 to 5 times per week. While students in the traditional Red Cross or YMCA classes take several months to master many of the required skills, Acarath students often learn them in a few weeks. As a result, we teach some skills that are dependant on their age and strength.
The Acarath program has two goals. The first is to encourage the children to enjoy the water and to be comfortable in that environment. The staff moves very slow and gentle with new students. The water is very warm, just a shade cooler than bath water. The pool has a very shallow area where the water is knee deep on the children. The children are ability grouped and the teachers work one-on-one with non-swimmers. Most of the children are able to swim a few strokes with their face in the water by Christmas of the first year. Children are usually able to swim a length of the pool with rotary breathing and to swim a bit on their back by the middle of their second year. By the middle of their kindergarten year, they are fairly proficient in front crawl and back stroke and have been introduced to butterfly and breaststroke. By the end of their kindergarten year, many of the children are ready to enter competitive swim programs.
The second goal of the swim program is to teach the children skills that will make them safe in the water. From the beginning the children are encouraged to jump into the water;
at first this is just into the instructor's arms. As they become more comfortable in the water they are taught to jump in, come up, get their bearings, and swim to safety. At the end of the school year, we set aside a water safety week.
Children learn what it feels like to fall into water with their clothes on. They realize that although swimming in those circumstances is difficult, they can do it. They learn to tum around, swim back to safety, and yell as loud as they can for help. They jump in wearing various personal flotation devices and learn to relax and let the life jackets do the work. The degree to which individual students participate in the water safety lessons is, of course, dependant on their skill level. A part of every child's daily swim lesson is spent on water safety skills. Swim lessons are a part of the program and are included in the tuition.