Water safety...

Megan and Alex have had swimming lesson since they were babies. I love swimming so I thought it important to pass this love as early as I could, as well as the essential need for water safey as well.

We have changed swimming centers along the way, and are now thinking about changing again.

Currently they go to a centre that soley deals with swimming lessons. The instructors are great but I still have misgivings.

Firstly, the lessons are about $15 each for a half hour session. $30-ish for 30 mins in a lot when you work it out over the year. $300 per term, more then $1200 for 20 hours of lessons over the year.

The kids are in a group together, which makes things easier for us, but the group has 4 kids in in. So for the 30 minute session, they only get about 5-7minutes of one-on-one time with the teacher.

The teacher is great and the kids love her, but I don't see huge improvements in their skills to be worth the money, apart from them both being confident (too confident at times) in the water by themselves.

So our idea is to go to the local swimming pool and teach the kids ourselves. We would pay the entry fee and then we can stay for hours. The entry fee for all 4 of us to swim all day is considerably cheaper than their current lesson fees. 

The skills that were being taught during their lessons had almost no equipment, so we could manage that ourselves. Even though there are loads of things both kids can now do, I don't feel that they would be able to save themselves if they were in trouble in the water. That would be a huge focus for me.

Two big questions remain....would the kids be as co-operative for us as they are with their current teacher, and would we actually go each week when we aren't committed to already paid fees?