Monday, July 27, 2009

1st Day of Swim Lessons




It's 81 degrees now at 1:00. We're supposed to reach a high of 91 today. Pretty warm for the Seattle area! I've been amazed by the warm weather and lack of rain we've been having.

It's a good thing that it's been nice and warm as Isaiah started his first swim lesson today and Kyrie went off to have fun at Vacation Bible School this morning. They get to go to Seahurst Park later this afternoon and play in the water. I sent her off with a Bento lunch. I haven't made one in a while. She really likes the shaped boiled eggs.


I knew that Isaiah was going to be really timid at the lesson. I tried bribing him by taking him to the Dollar Tree to pick a prize for doing a good job in his lesson. We got to the pool, and they wanted him to jump in to them, and he half-jumped, while maintaining a death grip on my fingers. The other kids in his class were 3 and 4 years old, and they were a lot less fearful than him. I'm thinking we waited too long before starting lessons. Of course, Isaiah has always been a pretty shy and reserved kid.

They got him to do a few bobs(though he didn't completely put the top of his head under). After that, they helped them float on their backs and stomachs. At least he put his face under water when they asked him to. They helped the kids go down and pick up the little toy discs on the bottom of the pool, but Isaiah would have NONE of that! I think he clawed the poor teacher's neck because she came back wincing and grabbing her neck in pain. They did some kicking across the pool with kickboards and the teachers were having the kids jump into them. Again, Isaiah didn't want to- unless the teacher held his hand. They came back across to the shallow end and worked on kicking while holding on to the wall. Isaiah is fairly good at kicking, but he kicks with his knees bent- although, all the kids were doing this, so he wasn't alone there.
They played a game of who could hold their breath the longest, but Isaiah didn't even want to try.











End of lessons. I think we'll be going to the pool a lot this week to work on some of these skills with him. Fortunately, it's supposed to be warm and sunny all week!


3 comments:

Erin J said...

I bet he'll loosen up after a while. Peer pressure works wonders after all!

Cynthia said...

I've been a total slacker about swim lessons. My oldest two have finally figured it out on their own. Sigh. You're doing better than I did with that whole thing.

Have fun at the pool! And 91 IS hot for that area. I heard Portland was over 100 the other day. Yowza!

Marilyn said...

Ok, so what is a Bento lunch? Am I that dumb or something?