Teaching Infant and Preschool Aquatics: Water Experiences the Australian Way

Rating:
Summary: of limited use for parents
Review: I bought this book hoping to find some specific exercises I could practice with my child in our pool. It was not very useful for that purpose. The book seems more of a way for existing swimming teachers to learn about this organization's philosophies on child development as it pertains to aquatics. It was nice to read a detailed accounting of why a 1-year-old resists back-floating but I wanted more of an idea of how to teach my child to blow bubbles and other beginning skills. It really doesn't go into actually showing you how to teach skills. This is a pitfall of buying a book based only on the title. Were I able to flip through it first, I would've realized this was probably not the book I was looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Good for new swimming teachers
Review: This book is a very thorough introduction to teaching swimming to young children and is great for new swimming instructors. It covers the basics how a child's developmental stage intersects with the kinds of swimming skills and water safety children are ready to take on. However, I found it does not provide teachers with concrete ways to actually operationalize these skills through water play and songs. A few pages at the end of the book list out sample lesson plans, but if you aren't familiar with the songs listed you are out of luck (many of them appear to be australian children's songs). To be ready to teach a class you would also need to find a book of water songs and games for kids of different developmental stages.