Category: Babies

Safety 101

16 Dec 2016 by admin

Water Safety for kids

A few things you need to know about water safety.

Western Australians enjoy a large variety of water-based activities, whether along our pristine coastline, our inland waterways, public pools, and adventure parks and of course our very own backyard pools. However, danger lurks. While I don’t want to dampen our enthusiasm for fun there is no substitute for supervision or never swimming alone.

A child can drown in 6 cm of water. Most drowning and near-drowning incidents occur when a child falls into a pool or is left alone in the bathtub. Bathtubs, buckets, toilets, and hot tubs present drowning dangers as well. Never leave a child alone near water.

Some little-known facts about safety in these areas are:

  • Never leave a child alone near water. -This is important and therefore bears repeating.
  • Everyone in the family should learn to tread water and swim.
  • If you’re not a swimmer yourself, it’s a good idea to take lessons and learn how to swim
  • Even when lifeguards are on duty, supervise your own child.
  • This person should not be reading, texting, using a smart phone, or otherwise distracted.
  • Home pools and spars should always be fenced, gated and locked or appropriately covered when not in use.
  • Never run near swimming pools
  • Use the Slip Slop Slap Wrap Rule and drink lots of water
  • Learn CPR

http://www.royallifesaving.com.au/families
https://youtu.be/CL4D7Hxdlk0

Water Familiarisation

14 Dec 2016 by admin

Adult swimming classes

Water Familiarisation Classes for infants are they a good idea?

The Biggest Little Swim School Says Yes!

  1. Motor skill development is enhanced along with fitness.
    It has been found that water familiarization lessons helps improve baby’s co-ordination by forcing baby to move bilaterally to maintain their equilibrium (vestibular stimulation) within the water and assists in balance outside of the water, because of this balance is improved both on land and in the water and the gentle exercise, relaxes and stimulates babies ‘muscles and increases appetites. You will find that most babies will eat and sleep better on swimming days. When they sleep better, so do we!
  2. Cognitive skill development
    The mental stimulation they gain within their class often sees the early acquisition of physical and social skills. See the below link for published results. “In 2008, two leaders from within the swim industry, Laurie Lawrence (leading advocate in child water safety) and Ross Gage (CEO of Swim Australia), approached Professor Robyn Jorgensen at Griffith University to conduct an independent study of the benefits for young children participating in early-years swimming”.
    Click the below link to see the amazing results.
    http://kidsalive.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2013-EYS-Final-Report-30-July-13-JM.pdf
  3. Developing Independence
    In a relaxed comfortable environment children are able to develop skills such as floating, submerging jumping in and returning to the wall while gaining confidence. This moves them into classes on their own much earlier than those that have not had the chance to be involved in water familiarisation classes at an early age.

In Australia our long summers are spent with many hours in and around water, teaching safety and a respect of the water is our number one priority, to hopefully aid the decrease of drowning statistics in our country.

At ‘The Biggest Little Swim School’ we believe that water familiarisation classes are essential in our society. As the drowning rate increases it’s paramount that our children are educated from an early age about the necessity to make sound risk management decisions in any given circumstances so that safety in and around the water is established and risk taking is lessened as they get older.