Swimming class

Every Thursday Map has a swimming class at 3:30pm. The class is offered by Aquaduck and held at St. James Church Kindergarten in Dempsey Hill. The two teachers - Annabelle and Tiara - are very good with kids. Map has been going to swimming class since she was 8 months old. She loves being in the water.

At the swimming class

Today class had 7 babies and two of them were sisters.

The teachers started out by spreading plastic duckies in the water - and babies had to swim (with the help of parents) to get those duckies and put them in the basket as many as they could. Well - swimming for babies at 14 months was more like floating in water and occasionally kicking their legs and splashing water with their hands. Then the class officially started by everybody sang "good afternoon to you" song - which was pretty much "happy birthday to you" song. The teachers would pour water from a small bucket onto babies' head, so babies could learn how to hold their breath - the skill which would be used underwater. Then, babies would do water activities along with the nursery rhyme songs like "the wheels on the bus" and "if you are happy and you know it." Map's favorite one was "humpty dumpty" when the babies had to sit or stand on the platform of the swimming pool and jump down into the water with the cue word "fall". It was hilarious because babies at this age did not really master the cue word yet, so they would try to jump before the cue word. Or else they would continue to sit/stand and sometime they would start to walk off to somewhere else and mommy or daddy had to get out of swimming pool to run around after them. To date, Map had not wandered off yet though. Alternate between nursery rhyme songs was the swimming time, when the teachers dipped babies into the water and let them swim for around one meter to their parents. It was amazing to see babies really swim.

Swimming time

Today, the class did some new activities. Babies had to walk the entire length of the big rubber float (around 1.5m) and jump at the end into the water, or more like into their parents' hands. Map had a lot of fun with this. Then all babies sat together on this rubber float, while parents and teachers steered this float around the swimming pool. Map had sat obediently on the float for 2/3 of the entire activity when she realized she missed mommy and got off the float into mommy's arms. She refused to go back onto the float when mommy tried to put her back. Then the class did another new activity -the teacher had babies rotated under the water. This was very cool to see babies do half twirl. Guess, at this young age they could do so many things under the water with no fear.

Doing the half twirl underwater

Sleepy time - twinkle twinkle little star