Somehow one of my oh so savvy NCT ladies managed to wangle half a dozen of us to get a private group swim lesson scheduled at one of our local pools on account of the fact we couldn't find 6 spaces on any one course.
I'll be honest if this hadn't of been organised for me and my FOMO (fear of missing out) hadn't of kicked in I may not have booked baby E and myself in for swimming lessons. Not that I had anything against but I don't think I had a lot of expectations as to how fun a swimming lesson for a 5 (yes 5 OMG) month could be...
Turns out it's GREAT fun! Social, stimulating, lovely bonding opportunity and, most surprisingly, I can actually see where this is going to learning stuff!
So the place... It's at a local First Strokes pool. The pool itself is small which is fine for our purposes, it looks nice and new and up to date with lovely viewing areas which I am looking forward to Daddy A coming along to, changing (a real highlight) is spacious, clean and a secure space to leave your belongings and parking is easy and plentiful. All good stuff.
The lesson... Two in and I can see they follow a structure. It's 30 minutes long. First 10 minutes is songs to which we help the babies to do actions to, I can see this is making the pool a positive place to be where they feel confident. The next ten minutes will be some kind of swimming activity where we are given "woggles" (foam tubes) to help us float so our arms are fee to hold baby and/or we walk and they swim chasing balls. At the end we do one or two UNDERWATER activities where we use a babies natural throat closing reflex (which is activated by blowing in their faces) and they go underwater. In a word... AMAZING! E always comes up looking a little disorientated but kind of excited and surprised at herself but never a peep of a cry!
Price £85 for ten lessons. Essentially £8.50 for half an hour. Probably sounds expensive but from my experience I'm fairly happy to pay it. The facilities are nice and the lessons are high quality. Not to mention there is talk of CERTIFICATES! Eeee!
I need to revisit this with pictures as soon as the husband can make his work from home day coincide with a Tuesday to come take them... But all in all FAB. Not as cheap, versatile or as good for a photo shoot as walking but great.
I have a friend testing out the oh so expensive Water Babies next week so it will be interesting to compare.
Just got my payment for $500.
ReplyDeleteMany times people don't believe me when I tell them about how much you can get by taking paid surveys online...
So I took a video of myself getting paid $500 for taking paid surveys to set the record straight once and for all.