Swim Lessons

The kids just finished their first session of swim lessons for the summer and they did great! They have both improved so much since last year. Jonathan is now old enough to be in a class rather than private lessons, and for this first session, both Clara and Jonathan were in the same class.

Sitting on the steps, waiting for their turn to show us all they learned. Perhaps the most exciting thing is that this is the first summer since we've been in CA that Chris has been home. So it was Chris' first time to be able to come watch on the last days of lessons and the kids were so excited!

Clara's Swim Lessons

This year both kids had Mr. Ryan for a teacher. He was great with the kids.

Clara has gotten so much better. She's starting to keep her bottom in line with the rest of her body when she's swimming. Next is learning how to take breaths and keep swimming!

Practicing her Back Float


Kicking on her back. She still needs some work on learning to relax on her back so that she can keep her bottom up in line with the rest of her body.


Jumping in from the side

SPLASH!!!!

There's Clara swimming on her own back to the steps. She can swim as far as her first breath takes her!

Jumping off the diving board.

After the first observation day!

Getting ready to swim back to the steps

Practicing that back float again

Jumping from the side in the shallow end

Off the side where it's slightly deeper

Off the diving board

Clara will be moving up to the next class for her next session in a couple weeks. They'll begin to work with her on what to do after she runs out of air from that first breath and also work on swimming on her back. She has to be competent in both of those before she can move into the deep end.

Jonathan's Swim Lessons

After the second day of swim lessons I took Jonathan to the doctor only to find out he had swimmer's ear. UGH! The doctor advised that I keep him out of the water. Lessons are only 30 minutes a day Monday through Friday for 2 weeks and there's about 6 kids in the class. So Jonathan's ears were not in the water too long, so for once I didn't listen to the doctor. I kept him in swim lessons, but put alcohol drops in his ear directly after lessons each day. I put an ear plug in the unaffected ear and once the medicated drops made his right ear better, we kept an ear plug in that ear as well. His ears are all better now, but the doctor advises ear plugs and alcohol drops for the remainder of the summer. Jonathan is on board as long as it means he can still swim!

Swimming back to the steps

Each time it was Jonathan's turn to swim with Mr. Ryan, Jonathan made it his mission to make Mr. Ryan smile...

...As you can see, Jonathan was very successful!

Back float

Kicking on his back

Ready to jump into the shallow end

Swimming to Mr. Ryan

Clara consoled Jonathan after he swallowed a little water

After the first observation day

Kicking on his back

It was Jonathan's turn to jump in the shallow end, but he had a little unexpected help from the kid behind him (check out his face). The kid behind him was constantly pushing and shoving other kids into the pool, and his mother thought it was funny. The day before, another child's mother almost had to jump in when that same kid shoved him in from the steps. Mr. Ryan was demonstrating with another child and missed the ordeal that time, but from then on, they had a secondary teacher standing by just in case. Chris and I found it frustrating that the mother wasn't more active in trying to stop her child!

Jumping from the side where it's slightly deeper

Jumping off the diving board

Jonathan did great! Mr. Ryan said Jonathan's already figuring out how to keep his bottom in line with the rest of his body too. He still needs more work with actually making productive strokes and kicks, but he's well on his way!

The kids have one more session of swim lessons in 2 weeks, I can't wait to see how much more they'll improve!