The information below is for children’s lessons, ages 2-9 years. If you would like to learn more about booking for parent and baby lessons, read our handy guide here.
When booking your child into swimming lessons with SwimWay, you are able to view all the spaces we currently have available on our website before contacting us.
Find Your Pool & Lesson Time
By visiting the Find Your Pool section of our website, you can select the relevant venue, and click on the availability links for term time or holiday lessons.
This will bring up a PDF document with all the spaces we currently have available at that location. However, we do not list spaces that have been booked. The page clearly shows the venue, day, time and instructor of each space we still have available. Along with this information, there are three more columns:
- Level Working Towards
- Age Guide
- Class Type
The above sections are extremely important to keep an eye on when sourcing your spaces. If you choose the wrong time for your child’s age/ability, you will inevitably delay your booking and perhaps even miss out on your preferred space.
To break down the examples above:
Tuesday 14:30
A slot with instructor Alejandro at Balham. We have not booked this class yet. Thus, we have listed it as “OPEN SPACE” for ages 2-9 years. Some locations have limitations of how many children can swim every half hour, so if you a see it listed as “1:1 lesson only”, then we cannot offer a 1:2 lesson.
Tuesday 15:30
A slot with instructor Jay at Balham. Listed as “working toward stage 01”, for ages 3.5 – 4.5 years. As per the final column, this is a 1:2 lesson that has a child already booked in, who is looking for a partner. The child in this class has attained beginner 2 in the
Tuesday 16:00
A slot with instructor Jay at Balham. Again, we have not booked this class yet. Hence, we have listed it as an “OPEN SPACE” for ages 2-9 years. However, we have labelled this as “available as a 1:1 or a 1:2 lesson”. This means you can either book one child privately, or two children as 1:2. If you only have one child, but would still like to book the space as a 1:2 lesson, this is possible. We have not listed any restrictions, so we will try to source a partner for you.
Tuesday 17:00
A space with instructor Alejandro at Balham. Again, you can see that there is no child currently booked in this slot as it is listed as an “OPEN SPACE” for ages 2-9 years. However, this time you can see the class type is “available as a 1:1 or a 1:2 lesson if you have a partner”. This is because some of our locations we do not source partners for 1:2 lessons, so you will need to provide your own partner if you want to book 1:2. Alternatively, it may be at a point in the term where demand has decreased, and we know we will not be able to source a partner for the class, so you will have to provide your own, or book as a 1:1 lesson.
Hyperlinks
Additionally, the columns that are highlighted in blue and underlined are hyperlinks that will take you to a page on our website where you can view more information about the venue, the instructor and the stage.
Find Your Stage
If you are unsure of your child’s stage, we have a helpful Find Your Stage questionnaire you can go through to ascertain the best class for your child. It is extremely important to never overestimate your child’s abilities. If you see a spot for a stage/age that you know isn’t suitable for your child, please do not request it and provide inaccurate information about your child’s level. It will only lead to a mismatch in the class, and you losing your space at a later date when alternative availability is scarce.
Additional Information
Our website contains all the information you require to make an accurate assessment of your child’s ability. But if you are still not sure, please click here to email us with answers to the following questions, and we will happily respond with further guidance:
- Has he/she had lessons before? If yes, was he/she given any badges/awards/levels?
- Is he/she confident/comfortable in the water?
- Does he/she swim with attachable floatation aids (armbands, etc.)?
- Can he/she put his/her head underwater and blow bubbles?
- Is he/she able to float unassisted on the back and/or front? How many seconds?
- When he/she is swimming on the back/front, is it with arms, or just kicking?
- If just kicking, how many metres on the back/front?
- If with arms, how many metres full backstroke?
- When he/she is swimming front crawl, is the breathing to the front or to the side? Both sides, or just one side?
- How many metres front crawl?
- If he/she is swimming breaststroke, is it the full stroke with arms & legs together, or separately?
- How many metres breaststroke?
- Has he/she started learning butterfly? If so, is it just at an introductory (basic undulation movement), intermediate (kicking & arms separate) or full stroke?
- How many metres butterfly?
That’s it! We hope this guide helps you, and the next step is to…