We suggest that parents start their kids out with 2 or more lessons per week. The reason for this being that the more often your kids are practicing the 8 Basic Water Safety Skills in the water, the faster they will learn and become water safe.
If you can’t swing doing 2 or more lessons per week, your child will still learn to swim doing 1 day a week, it’ll just take them longer to learn.
We do not teach doggy paddling at Big Kahuna Swim Academy.
The way we usually explain it to parents is that if you were to fall into the ocean miles off shore and tried to doggy paddle your way back, you wouldn’t make it – you would drown before you got back to shore.
This is why we teach our students how to roll over and float on their back (swim-float-swim). This provides the swimmer with an opportunity to rest and recover before they continue to swim – gaining their energy back and being able to get some nice good breaths.
Water safety and drowning prevention is our #1 focus at Big Kahuna Swim Academy.
In order for our students to become water safe, we teach them the 8 Basic Water Safety Skills:
1) Getting in the Pool
2) Eyes In/Submersion
3) Gliding
4) Back Float
5) Rolling Over
6) Kicking
7) U-Turns
8) Getting out of the Pool
We accept students as young as 4-6 months old.
Once a baby’s umbilical cord has healed, they can start learning basic skills such as holding their breath and submersion (eyes in). They can even start getting comfortable with being on their back at this early age as well.
Once they hit 4-6 months old, their development in the water will really start to take off since they will then be able to physically hold a back float on their own and start learning to roll over.
