Float to Stroke Swim School

Avery, Sage, and Lafe have been going to the Float to Stroke Swim School for the past 3 weeks. It has been quite interesting. They start kids as soon as they can crawl. The goal of the program is to teach kids to be able to survive if they were to fall into the water. They spent a lot of the time going from a swordfish on their stomach to flipping over to their back and floating to the side of the pool where they flip back over and climb out. Avery was already quite comfortable in the water as long as she could touch. She never dared to go into the deep end or jump off the diving board. She is now a lot more comfortable in water of any depth. Sage's experience was a little bitter-sweet. She cried for pretty much every lesson, the whole lesson. She didn't like to float on her back and even more didn't want to go onto her stomach. Even though she cried the whole time by the end she could go from swimming on her stomach to flipping over to her back and kick her feet til she got to the side of the pool . In this picture the teacher is there behind her but she is floating all by herself.
This was one of the hardest parts of the lesson. The teacher would ask us to take Lafer to the diving board and drop him in. When she first asked me to do it I thought, "Are you crazy?" I felt terrible just dropping him off the diving board. But as soon as I did it he came right up to the surface and floated on his back with no help.
Like Sage, Lafe would cry the whole time. The teacher would put him in the water on his stomach and just let him go. He didn't like that much. But he was amazing at flipping immediately over to his back and just floating.
I actually video taped some of the lessons and was going to put them on the blog but Chad said that it would break his mom's heart when she saw her grandbabies crying. But seriously it was an amazing experience to see how much they learned and how capable they are of being great swimmers.