Swim Programs
Both our BabiesCanSwim and KidsCanSwim programs offer low-ratio classes. Thanks to our highly trained teachers and our focus on Active Learning your kids will get the individual attention they need to work on skills they find difficult as well as the opportunity to socialize with other kids and to work in teams on safety and survival skills.
This is especially true in our Babies Can Swim program that focuses not only on you and your baby bonding but on meeting other parents and babies.
Babies Can Swim
We believe swimming is a life skill, like walking and riding a bike. With Babies Can Swim, you and your baby can work together to practice and develop your baby’s water confidence and more critically, their water safety, while nurturing your unique bond.
Our specially trained teachers understand how infants and toddlers develop and what capabilities they have in the water at varying ages.
Our Babies Can Swim program will:
- Engrain potentially life-saving skills
- Give your baby water confidence and water smarts
- Build muscle strength and motor skills early
- Give you and your baby a chance to socialize with other parents and babies
- Provide an awesome bonding experience and skin-to-skin contact with your baby
Swimming starts with a free lesson so you and your baby can check out our faculties, teachers and programs for yourself!
The Babies Can Swim program’s four levels focus primarily on water familiarity, body position and survival:
Level B1
Age: 3 months – 7 months
Focus: Enjoying water, socializing and bonding with parents
Level B2
Age: 6 months – 15 months
Focus: Basic back floating, short submersions, safety
Level B3
Age: 14 months – 2.5 years
Focus: Basic paddling, longer submersions, jumping in the water
Level B4
Age: 2.5 years – 3 years
Focus: Transition to parents out of the pool, active paddling and kicking, floating, and moving independently*
*Around the age of 2.5, toddlers will enter Level B4, our transition class, which is focused on getting them ready for future lessons without parents in the water. Graduation to the Kids Can Swim program begins at around 3 years old.
Kids Can Swim
Whether your toddler just graduated from the Babies Can Swim program or your child is 3-12 years old and new to Kids Can Swim, we welcome all skill levels!
Children enrolled in the Kids Can Swim program will have the opportunity to advance through 12 levels based on their skill, rather than their age.
Swimming starts with a free assessment lesson to ensure that your child is placed in the right level. From there, they are free to learn at their own pace—no “catching up” required!
The Kids Can Swim program focuses on:
- Providing your kids with both technique and real-life experience (your kids will be as ready to join the swim team as they are for a pool party or weekend at the lake)
- Proper freestyle and backstroke technique, breathing and race starts
- The fundamentals of breaststroke and butterfly
- Endurance, helping to rescue a friend, extended practice floating and the three core life-saving strokes (elementary backstroke, back scull, and inverted kick breaststroke)
The Kids Can Swim program has 12 levels split into three areas of focus:
EXPLORING
This stage is intended to get kids familiar with water, understand the basics of kicking and paddling, and learn basic rescue techniques for themselves and their friends.
Level K1
Technique: Enjoying the water, starting to kick, starting to glide
Real-Life: Safe entry and cling to the side of the pool
Level K2
Technique: Start to float, push and glide, kick farther
Real-Life: Kick to the edge and safe exit
Level K3
Technique: Kick and glide with power, paddle hands, kick on my back
Real-Life: Deep section (4 ft) fall and turn with cling to the side of the pool
Level K4
Technique: Dive underwater, start freestyle arms, start sculling
Real-Life: Short back floating and kick to the edge
LEARNING
Now that kids are comfortable in the water, kicking, paddling and floating, we’re starting to introduce more refined techniques and breathing positions as well as how to help rescue a friend. Learning swimming techniques is all about repetition and building on details.
Level K5
Technique: Freestyle breathing intro, back glide, backstroke without floatie
Real-Life: Helping a friend, aided long back float, call for help
Level K6
Technique: Dolphin kicks, freestyle progress, glide underwater
Real-Life: Search and retrieve toys, unaided long back float
Level K7
Technique: Treading water, backstroke arms
Real-Life: Dolphin kicks underwater, tread water and call for help
Level K8
Technique: Back glides, freestyle body position, treading water longer
Real-Life: Partner rescue and challenge course
PERFECTING
We’ve got the basics of freestyle and backstroke down! Now it’s time to introduce breaststroke and life-saving backstroke while perfecting our breathing technique. We are now focusing on endurance to ensure our kids are strong, mentally and physically.
Level K9
Technique: Freestyle lateral kicks, freestyle and backstroke distance
Real-Life: Partner rescue with noodle, safe entry with distance swim
Level K10
Technique: Breaststroke kick, freestyle race starts
Real-Life: Safe entry with longer swim, life-saving backstroke
Level K11
Technique: Backstroke race start, freestyle breathing, freestyle distance
Real-Life: Extended freestyle swim, 3 survival strokes
Level K12
Technique: 50m freestyle, breaststroke timing, basic butterfly
Real-Life: Partner rescue drill, tread water for 60 seconds
Monthly Assessments
Our full and complete swimming education program includes monthly assessments of each child’s technical and practical progress. Children have the freedom to learn at their own pace and graduate to the next level when they are ready. No one fails and no one gets left behind.
Survival Week
In addition to our real-life focus, every month includes Survival Week training, where we work on core survival skills. Kids will learn what it’s like to swim with their clothes on, how to call for and receive help, how to tread water, and more.
Learning Guarantee
We know our product works and that if kids attend their weekly lessons regularly, they will progress through our program and become confident and safe swimmers for life.
To that end, we offer a learning guarantee to all our swimmers who are 3 years old and above that states if your child has met the below criteria and still not passed their level, their lessons are free until they do:
- Attended 20 swimming lessons;
- Has not had a break in their enrolment (eg. did not take a break from lessons for a month or more); and,
- Has maintained 90% attendance in their classes.
After your child has initially qualified for the learning guarantee, to retain the free lessons, they must maintain a 90% attendance rate in their classes and must not take a break from monthly lessons – otherwise the learning guarantee will be removed.
