Group Swim Lessons

• A child must be at least 6 months old to enroll in Parent and Child accompanied by a parent during all lessons.
• Instructors work to provide parents with techniques to help orient their children in the water while helping them have fun and enjoy the water.
• Skills include how to properly supervise children in and around the water, how to enter and exit the water with parent assistance, how to hold and support your child in the water, and how to help children learn and explore the water safely.
• If a child completes Parent and Child Aquatics, demonstrating skills and strength in the water (and is nearly 4 years old or older), they may be ready to enroll in Preschool Aquatics.

• Preschool Aquatics promotes developmental and fundamental water safety and aquatic skills of young children about 4 and 5 years of age.
• Participation should not be determined by age alone. To determine if Preschool Aquatics is appropriate for a child, consider their development, maturity, and experience; for some preschool children with little to no exposure to the water, Parent and Child Aquatics may still be appropriate while others may be able to go directly into Learn-to-Swim levels.
• Instructors focus on skills such as independent water entry and exit, beginner breath control and submerging, floating and gliding on front and back, and beginner arm and leg actions assisted by the instructor.
• The objective of Preschool Aquatics is to teach elementary, building-block aquatic skills while helping children develop good experiences and safe practices around the water.

• The recommended minimum age for entry into Learn-to-Swim Level 1 is about 6 years old with no maximum age for any level.
• While it is suggested that children go through Preschool Aquatics where they will gain the basic beginner aquatic and water safety skills (see Preschool Aquatics descriptions), determining a participant’s appropriate starting point can be done through identifying previous experience in and around the water.
• While our Learn-to-Swim levels are based on American Red Cross suggestions, the number of recommended lessons for a student will vary depending on skill level and ability of the student accompanied with instructor advisory.

Learn-to-Swim Level 1: Introduction to Water Skills

• Instructors teach and offer assistance with basic aquatics skills including entering and exiting the water independently, floating on front and back, breath control and submerging, changing direction and position, treading, and swimming on front and back.
  
• Level 1 is meant to help students learn basic water safety information and skills to build comfortability, independence, and confidence in the water.
  
• Instructors prepare students for independent swimming to solidify swimming skills of Levels 2 and above.
  

Learn-to-Swim Levels 2-3: Fundamentals of Aquatic Skills and Stroke Development

• Levels 2 and 3 mark the beginning of independent swimming skills. Students learn to float and recover to vertical standing or treading positions without support.
  
• Instructors focus on developing simultaneous and alternating arm and leg actions on the front and back which lay the foundation for front crawl, elementary backstroke, and breaststroke.
  
• In Levels 2 and 3, students will work on independently floating, rotary breathing, treading, and swimming while continuing to be exposed to water safety skills.
  

Learn-to-Swim Levels 4-6: Stroke Improvement, Refinement, and Proficiency

• In Learn-to Swim Level 4, participants improve their aquatic skills and increase their swimming endurance for greater distances by swimming front crawl, backstroke, sidestroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. Instructors introduce more advanced skills such as open turns, headfirst and feetfirst surface dives, stroke instruction and development, and treading.
• In Learn-to-Swim Level 5, instructors continue to help participants grow endurance by increasing distances, providing feedback and direction for the coordination and refinement of swimming strokes (e.g. Frontcrawl, Breaststroke, Backstroke, and Butterfly, and introducing flip turns. Different surface dives are also introduced.
• The objectives of Learn-to-Swim Level 6 aim to help refine strokes so participants swim with more ease, efficiency, power and smoothness over greater distances preparing them for lap-swim level fitness and endurance.

• Promoting swim lessons to both the general public and the University of Tennessee, RecSports offers for anyone above the age of 12 with any swimming experience level to participate in group swim lessons.
• This option allows for swim instruction to be customized to meet the goals of the participants whether it is beginner exposure to water safety or advanced lap swim fitness.