Our Top 5 Puddle Ducks activities to keep our little swimmers busy at home when you're Self-Isolating

Here at Puddle Ducks, we want every child to love swimming, respect the water and stay safe. Considering the recent COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak and our suspension of lessons due to Government advice, we understand that parents may have to work from home and self-isolate whilst keeping children entertained.

We want to help you continue the fun you have in your Puddle Ducks lessons whilst you're at home and away from the water, so we have come up with our 5 super fun activities that you can do which will help to keep your little one confident in the water and all whilst having lots of splashy fun!

Blowing Bubbles 💦

Use bath time toys to encourage play in the water. You could place floating boats in the water and encourage your child to blow the boats along.

Play at washing your face 💦

Make water contact fun! The splashier, the better.

Practice skills you’ve learnt in class 💦

You could use your child’s favourite waterproof doll or toy to practice how we break down our strokes in our swimming lessons and allow your child to learn by teaching their doll what they know.

• Kicking and Splashing Hands

You can also practice your Kicking Legs and Splashing Hands with a balloon! Kicking is the driving force behind swimming! The sooner our children learn to kick, the quicker they can progress to independent swimming, so we spend lots of time in the water teaching our children to kick their legs. The same goes with splashing activities by playing with the balloons – encourage your baby to hit the balloon whilst saying “splash” and then kick the balloon (you may need to support them), repeat the word “kick”. Children learn through repetition and key words.

• Floating

In our baby and pre-school programmes, we love to float around the pool on our backs. It allows us to spend lots of time with our babies but it’s also important for gaining beautiful swimming alignment and it’s also a personal survival skill (floating on back until help arrives). The water gives our babies a lovely massage and helps to strengthen the muscles in the body. It also allows our teacher to look at the physical development of your baby and whether they are strong enough to cope with activities in our Splashers and Kickers programme.

Lie your babies down on the floor and sing one of our floating songs to them such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. If your baby is lifting their head and neck off the floor, this is called the righting reflex and it tells our teachers that your baby is starting to become strong enough to do some tummy swimming. If they can support themselves on their tummy’s (lifting their head off the floor), let’s turn them onto their front.

Make bath time a story! 💦

Get splashing in the bath and relate it to their favourite stories or play time ideas.

Have a sing-song! 💦

Songs are a great way for your little one to interact with water in a fun and exciting way. You could sing Puddle Ducks songs such as “Three Puddle Ducks Went Swimming One Day” or adapt their favourite songs. “Wheels on the Bus” is a great example of how you can use different actions for different verses.

• Wheels on the bus go round and round (move hands around in the water)
• Wipers on the bus (move baby/child side to side)
• Rain on the bus (using your hands make droplets onto baby/child’s head)
• Horn on the bus (Splash hands, like a beeping horn)

Please keep an eye on our Website, Facebook and Instagram for up to date class information, fun resources and useful tips. If you have any questions, please give us a call on 0161 883 0222 and a member of our lovely team will be happy to answer any queries you may have.