Lesson Stages

We have devised our own stages built and tailored by our experienced teachers to progress your child in swimming as quickly as possible. We are unique as we have a technique based approach to teaching so that your child will learn not just to swim, but to swim to a high standard that will last for a lifetime.

We have split our lessons into 11 stages, each with a different hat colour and Penguin name.

Parent and Toddler

We offer a friendly class where you will join your toddler in the water in guided sessions. We provide a fun and safe environment for your infant to enjoy the water and swimming, whilst learning basic swimming skills such as blowing bubbles and general water confidence.

Turtles

Swimming lessons for complete beginners from the age of 3yrs old. We encourage water confidence and introduce the skills that are fundamental to safe swimming. Each class caters for 6 children with 3 helpers in the water, ensuring plenty of hands-on help.

Little Blue

We encourage water confidence and introduce the skills that are fundamental to safe swimming. They will develop the skills to swim 2-5m unaided.

Rockhopper

Building upon the basic leg kicks and arm pulls, your child will learn to swim 5m of frontcrawl and backcrawl with good basic technique, breaststroke is also introduced.

Macaroni

Swimmers are introduced to deep water learning how to retrieve a rescue aid offered to them, tread water, scull, float to survive and basic breaststroke skills.

Gentoo

With swimmers now safe in the deep end and with knowledge of what to do if they get tired or take on water, the skills on all strokes can be progressed in the deep water at the Gentoo level.

Adelie

At this stage we build on independent deep water confidence. We introduce the finer techniques of the 3 strokes and begin butterfly with dolphin body movements.

African

We start to work on efficient technique for the 4 strokes where your child will feel confident swimming longer distances and will be strong enough to be able to isolate and correct specific parts of the strokes.

Royal

Royals are moved into lane swimming and will be exposed to more competitive swimming terminology. We focus on increasing your child’s endurance and stamina and encourage correct technique with drills.

King

With a further focus on increasing your child’s endurance, we teach competitive swimming essentials that have been introduced in earlier stages such as diving and tumble turns.

Emperor

Emperors will be confident diving and will show efficient use of technique in all 4 strokes with correct turns. They will show good technique throughout 100m of each stroke (50m Butterfly).

Academy Star

Academy Stars will complete the Preliminary Competitive Starts award, will be competent with interval training and will be able to swim 400m in one go – this stage phases well into competitive swimming.

Targets for each Stage

Safety and Swimming Presentation