La Piscine

Welcome to the "Bassin d'Apprentissage." The small, indoor pool is right behind Betsy's school and just across the park from Molly's, but all the children in Olivet up through the equivalent of 5th grade take swimming in the same building, rotating through the year. We were so impressed by how smart the whole thing was -- the kids have swimming at school beginning when everyone is new at it, and before body-shyness and girls' periods set in.

Molly's class was divided into three groups by ability, and managed to both have a lot of fun and get a remarkable amount of actual swimming instruction in, particularly given that the pool is closer to the size of an average living room than it is to olympic size, and there are 30 kids in her class.

Betsy's class was divided into thirds. 2/3 of the class went to piscine at a time, while the other third did their small-group work with another teacher back in the classroom. Cricket got to go to a training class and then assist with Betsy's class, because they depend on 3-4 parent volunteers per session as well as the regular teacher to be suited up, in the pool, and helping, encouraging, and challenging kids as needed. It really was amazing to see the variety of setups, all designed to get children to play in the water in ways that would make them more confident, safer, and give them a chance to get closer to becoming swimmers.

Cricket snapped these pictures while the pool was being set up near the end of Betsy's swimming rotation. The children entered the water otter-style via the slide (or sitting up for the less-confident), then advanced between the ropes with one hand on each rope (accidentally making crawl-type swimming motions with their hands as they reached over the various floating beads). Along the way they ducked through the periodic hoola hoops (getting their heads wet, and navigating under water). They climbed out at the far end, jumped in with a noodle ("frite" or french fry in French), to a noodle, or on their own, and swam to the big red floaty mat. They climbed out onto the mat, slid off to traverse the monkey bars (placed so that they had to duck underwater again for the first few), then climbed or swam through the green climbing structure, and navigated the length of the wall to the steps to climb out and start over. Meanwhile, on the empty side of the pool, the other half of the group was swimming with flippers and noodles, ferrying bath toys from one end to the other on their fronts or their backs.

The skills built through the swimming rotation, so that the first time they met the green structure, it was possible to climb through without getting their chins wet, then the next time, the monkey bars would descend a bit to go from dry-head, to chins wet, to noses wet. After that, there was at least one eyes-under segment. They used noodles, bath toys, kickboards, flippers, diving toys, poles, and, always, the slide. Every child in the class made real progress, and several who had not had swimming the year before went from fearful to pretty comfortable, if not totally waterproof. We're hoping we'll have the opportunity to enjoy the water the the children ourselves this summer, before all the new skills atrophy.