This year we will be holding our annual water safety/PJ week between 9th – 15th October 2023, and we will once again be partnering with our national charity partner, a wonderful organisation called Children's Hospital Pyjamas. They are a fantastic charity providing pyjamas to poorly children in hospital who only have hospital gowns to wear and being given a new pair of PJ's brings some comfort to a child going through hardship. To find out more about the fantastic work Children's Hospital Pyjams do click on the link below:
https://www.childrenshospitalpyjamas.co.uk/
There are a number of ways to get involved with our Charity:
• You can bring a pair of new unworn pyjamas to the pool and pass them to your poolside assistant or teacher and the office team will collect them and arrange to deliver them to our local area co-ordinator
• Just Giving - we have set up a Just Giving page here for our franchise and when Pyjama Week is over all money donated will go directly to hospitals in our local area.
• Sponsorship - Friends and Family would love to see how your little one gets on and have the opportunity to sponsor them for completing a personal survival lesson plan in their pyjamas. You can download a sponsorship form here if you want to get started! once you have collected all the money you can then donate this via the Just Giving page.
Why is our Water Safety Awareness/PJ Week so important?
3 times a year Puddle Ducks Worcestershire holds our Water Safety Awareness/PJ Weeks, dedicated weeks where our focus is on Water Safety Awareness and teaching our children (and parents too!) the importance of being safe around water, what to do if the worst was to happen.
From our babies to our oldest Swim Academy children we are teaching them the skills through a variety of activities to know what to do if they come into trouble in the water. In teaching these skills to your children from as young an age as possible, they become second nature, and if the worst was to happen and they were to fall into water, they would instinctively know what to do.
Some of the activities we teach throughout our programmes include:
• Turning in the water and reaching to hold onto the wall/float
• Call out for help in the water
• Rolling off the float and re-surfacing to hold onto the float
• Kicking to the surface
• Blowing bubbles so as to not take on any water
At some of the pools during these weeks we encourage parents and children to wear their PJ’s. This gives all our swimmers a regular session where the babies/children are exposed to what it might feel like to be in the water with their clothes on. We do not positively encourage our swimmers to jump into the water whenever they can fully clothed – quite the opposite – but we can provide them with the opportunity to see how it would feel to be in the water, following an accidental submersion/fall into water, showing them that they can still swim, practice turning, etc.
What our teachers say, Jo our teacher from Croft House, Malvern College and the Mercure say:
“I love getting my Pj’s on for work for Pyjama week. It’s fun to see all the different designs and characters but it’s also really important life skills that we are reinforcing during these weeks. As we really hope it will never happen but if little ones were to fall into water whilst out and about they are not always going to be by the river or lake in their swim wear. PJ week gives them chance to experience swimming and moving through water with the added weight of clothes so that if it should happen it’s not a new experience”
It's Just as important for adults:
Louise one of our Puddle Ducks mums tells us about her experience of having to wear clothes in the water during a lifesaving experience last year:
“In September of last year while out on my morning run along the River Avon there was a lady who was in the middle of the river. Without even really thinking I jumped in to help, I didn’t even think about taking off my shoes or even my running jacket. It’s been nearly 20 years since I was a teenage summer lifeguard in the US, but much more recently I’ve been swimming with both of my children at Puddle Ducks and have had the experience of being in the water holding on to a child who’s heavy and wriggling whilst wearing my clothes. When I went in the river I didn’t panic at the sudden weight of all my clothes because we do it so frequently at the children’s swimming lessons that I knew what to expect. This was so valuable to me and I know it is for my children too because should they ever fall in or be in a similar situation to the one I was in then they’ll be prepared for it.”