Water Babies is the HIGHLIGHT of our week, honestly – Violet just loves it. Well, she is a pisces so I knew she’d have an affinity for water, but I didn’t realise she would show it at such a young age! Chapter 2 is over now, so it’s time to look back on our Water babies journey so far.
So, firstly- if you are thinking of signing your little one up for baby swimming classes, read my review of Water Babies Chapter 1, as thats where you’ll start and that post has all the information you’ll need as an introduction to baby swimming. We have also done the Water babies Underwater photo shoot, so here is our video on how the shoot is done and a peek at our photos!
So, onto Chapter 2! Excuse the slightly graining photo photos in this post, we took my Olympus Pen to take photos for the Chapter 1 review and the humidity in the pool actually stopped it working for a few days, luckily, it recovered but as you can imagine I didn’t want to risk it this time! ?
I think the first thing I realised about Chapter 2 is just how quickly your little ones will start to progress with their learning. Chapter 1 was all about easing them into the water and getting them used to a few safety skills and little dips underwater. Chapter 2 feels like you’ve cranked the gears up a notch (or five!) so you need to prepare yourself for much more fast paced, in depth learning. I also found Violet was a bit older so was so much more aware of her surroundings and what we were doing than in Chapter 1 which made it so much more fun too!
Over the break between Chapters 1 and 2, she changed so much. She learned to splash her hands in the water, meaning every lesson I’d be trying to listen to the instructions with water being splashed in my face from beginning to end, plus she’d kick her arms and legs in excitement at the toys and activities – after the first lesson the mascara had to go as I soon resembled a panda. Gone were the days of gentle movements round the pool, I learned this was going to be much more full on!
As the entire Water Babies journey is a continuous progressive way of learning, we continued with the same format to the lessons as in Chapter 1 so it was really familiar for the little ones, with songs they’d recognise like Splish Splash, Humpty Dumpty and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but in between the ‘old classics’ we’d add in brand new safety skills and build upon them every week.
The new skills in Chapter 2 come thick and fast, but our teacher like always was excellent at watching to see if the little ones were keeping up and getting on well with each skill, I think that is what puts my mind at rest with Water Babies is that even though it’s a shared class, it still feels so personal and you get quite a bit of 1-on-1 time especially during brand new skills and underwaters to check all is going well for everyone.
Some of the new skills included in Chapter 2 were introduction the ‘Bubba’ float, which doubled up as an awesome surf board, which Violet loved gliding on through the waves on. We did a ‘Ring of Roses’ swim which involves going straight down under the water and also finished the term swimming through a hoop! We also built upon lots of safety skills like getting them to hold onto the side more independently and even an ’emergency’ underwater which in theory would be is they were to fall into the pool, they’d know to kick to the surface and turn to hold onto the rail. This is just some of the activities, there were lots of things like ‘chase the fishy’, blowing bubbles and more which Violet loved too.
All in all, we have loved Chapter 2 even more than Chapter one, Violet was just so more knowing and aware, her excitement when we reach the pool is a picture, there are smiles for the entire session, she is just in her element, plus I feel so much better about taking Violet near water after our lessons. It’s amazing really that at such a young age they can learn such important skills, but I’m so glad we are, should the worst (shudder) happen.
Roll on Chapter 3!
We go to Water Babies lessons in Brighton & Hove which if you are local I’d highly recommend, to see their latest lesson schedule or to sign up, see their Facebook here! If you aren’t in Brighton, they do have lessons all round the country too!
