Tommy’s & Water Babies Splashathon

N did his second Tommy’s Splashathon at Water Babies at the weekend.  As I wrote here (link), it feels a bit silly trying to get sponsorship for a toddler, but the actual activities are always fun and built in to our usual swimming lessons.  We’d missed the week it was on as our lesson was cancelled, so it was brought forward to this week.

The theme this year was Peppa Pig.  N (somehow) knows who Peppa Pig is, even before I got him some Peppa Pig playing cards (Peppa Pig snap, anyone?) and jigsaw (they were a bargain).  He doesn’t watch the tv show, and although we’ve got a couple of books on numbers and shapes, he tells people that it’s Peppa Pig and Daddy Pig etc.

Poor Lynsy, our teacher, had to get dressed up in a pig outfit.  Pink galore – cossie, pig ears, tail and tutu!  Not the easiest for swimming in.  The toddlers didn’t seem at all phased by her being dressed in something other than her usual Water Babies top, although she did say she’d had to remove the nose after the first toddler group got upset at seeing it.

The activities were based around going to the zoo, so still doing our swims and using the fish and duck props as usual, there was a story to follow.

N was loving the animal references – they kicked like zebras, roared and reached their arms like tigers (although tigers don’t have arms, but they do reach and have long walks.  The link was ‘tiger arms’).   He was a tad on the vocal side, roaring all over the place.  I think someone’s recently switched N’s volume button to loud.

So lots of fun as well as the serious learning.

This week, the new main task was learning to jump off the side.  They already sit and ‘dive’ off, but next step was jumping.  N loved it, although his jump was more like a fall forward.  I guess that was better than jumping up, and also great to see him happy to try it, where he might have refused.

He’s still a bit rubbish when it comes to actually keeping kicking.  If he’s swimming with his woggle, he’ll basically just float and wait for the ripples to push him forward, rather than continuing to kick to get moving faster.  I’m not sure what I can do to actually get him to keep kicking as telling him that isn’t really making him kick.  He’s also still a bit vague when using his arms.  He knows what he’s meant to do as sitting on the side or in the car, he’ll practice, but put him in the water, and he’ll do a bit, then be happy to drift.  Even with me standing further ahead of him encouraging him to swim to me, doesn’t really do it.  Mind you, for once he was actually willing to swim to the side rather than to me which was something he’d refused to do before.

We’ve got our last lesson next week, so hopefully over the summer we’ll manage to get to swim once a week so N doesn’t forget what to do.  I’d really love for him to be a lot more confident at letting go and just swimming round the pool on the woggle without wanting me there to catch him all the time.

Did any of you take part in the Tommy’s Water Babies Splashathon?

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