Swim Teacher Stuff

Its all Free (under conditions outlined below) and more coming.

With several years swim teaching I often had kids transferred to me that were getting nowhere with other teachers (especially with breaststroke kick). I developed stuff that was not available to assist teaching kids with coordination issues or communicate and manage kids with special needs (e.g. Neurodiverse / Autism etc).

Keeping resources to myself does not fit my life philosophy especially as:

• many swim teachers are students,
• may only work a few hours a week,
• on minimum wage, making their
• disposable income limited so unable to invest which impacts the quality of teaching to the kids if resources like this were not free.

If that sounds like you (student that has entered the world of swim teaching) then welcome and the materials are free for you to download, laminate and use. If you run a centre then please make contact with me and may be able to licence the use and put your company logo on the materials (you need to supply your logo in a vector graphics format) for a modest fee.

Homework Sheet for Breaststroke Kick – I have used this with many parents to help them assist their children learn breaststroke kick co-ordination. What I do is laminate it and have parents take a photo (or would have gone through reams of paper by now) and do it with their kids at home. The fact is that for some kids, it simply works and regularly have kids that cannot do breaststroke kick and the following week after doing the homework succeed! Once again if you run a centre then contact me to get your logo on it! Download the Breaststroke Kick Homework here.

Terrys_Breaststroke_Kick_Homework_20240927

Program flashcards I have made the first 8 available now and you may like the “tips and tricks” on the back of the cards. I hope to progressively add as time goes by. Here are some cards I use that had professionally drawn:

These program /activity cards are helpful because:

• Some neurodiverse children need to know in advance what is coming up and have trouble transitioning from one exercise to the next (eg. kicking with board to without board) and can otherwise become highly agitated and difficult to manage.
• Many kids with special needs require precise instructions. The stuff that you can generally download are cartoonish and do not have the eyes looking to the bottom of the pool or other things correct so set out to fill this gap with an artist to make the drawings I needed. I found I can refer to the appropriate card and say “see how she is looking straight down, ears in water…” and those that respond better to visuals rather than verbal suddenly do it correctly!

How I use these program / activity cards is:

• Laminate each program / activity card individually (hopefully you have access to colour printer and laminator)
• Store in a plastic document box (my one is around 2cm thick that got from office supplier)
• Purchased some “velcro dots” (or strips) from the craft shop and put the hooked dots on the back of the flash cards and four of the soft strips on the outside of the box so that the box doubles as a display board
• Then stick the activity cards that you (or sometimes the student) select for that lesson onto the plastic box in order (fun activity last before lesson over card) per picture below.

Will you help yourself an others:

• Bookmark this page and check up on it regularly if you like the downloads. I decided not to have you register and use “mailchimp” or similar and simply monitor the number of downloads.
• More Program Flash Cards – You can see I have specified many cards that are coming. Once most of them are done, I would like to hear from you for more suggestions especially if you sponsor the production of stuff you need! I can then maybe get it done and add it to the collection for free downloads to instructors everywhere.
• Maybe you can help – If you are a graphic arts student and swimming teacher I would love to hear from you to try to accelerate this project.

Note: I have covered the costs for what I initially need but cannot do this for everyone else’s needs so sponsoring a card is a way to help yourself and others (note: I will maintain the copy-write of any drawing produced but doubt I will ever make money when it is being made available for free to most as a swimming community service).