Kids Swimming Lessons (Ages 4-12)

Preschool Beginner 1 and 2 are our entry-level classes for four and five year-old’s.  We do not assume any swimming background or experience when your child enters into the Preschool Beginner 1 class.  Because the children are younger and smaller, we break our introductory material across classes.  The skills learned in each of the classes are listed below.

Preschool Beginner 1

• Become comfortable and relaxed in the water.
• Learn the basics of aquatic breathing (bubbling).
• Become self-sufficient with floating, gliding and kicking on the front and the back
• Swim elementary swimming strokes on both the front and back for short distances without assistance
• Learn a simple roll to the back to get air or call for help without losing body position or momentum

Preschool Beginner 2

• Learn advanced breathing (bubbling) techniques that mix nose and mouth breathing
• Kick and swim elementary strokes on the back for longer distances and against the resistance of a current
• Kick and swim elementary strokes on the front with an integrated roll to breathe for longer distances and against the resistance of the current
• Execute a “safety swim” without putting the feet on the bottom of the pool — push off, swim 5 yards across the pool on the front, change directions, swim on the front back to the starting point, and grab the wall

Upon completion of the Preschool Beginner 2 class, your child will move on to the School-Age Beginner 2 class.

School-Age Beginner 1 is our entry-level classes for children ages six and up.  We assume that the kids are starting from scratch without experience or skills in the water.  Kids in this age group are bigger, more coordinated, and can pay attention better than the four and five year old’s in the Preschool sequence.  We can cover the same material from two Preschool classes in one class.  The material is the same, but the timeline is more compressed.  The skills in this class is listed below.

• Becoming comfortable and relaxed in the water.
• Learning the basics of aquatic breathing (bubbling) and then how to mix nose and mouth breathing.
• Becoming self-sufficient with floating, gliding, and kicking on the front and back.
• Rolling to get air without losing body position or momentum.
• Swim elementary strokes on the back for longer distances and against the resistance of a current.
• Swim elementary strokes on the front with an integrated roll to breathe for longer distances and against the resistance of the current.
• Execute a “safety swim” without putting the feet on the bottom of the pool — push off, swim 5 yards across the pool on the front, change directions, swim on the front back to the starting point, and grab the wall.

Upon completion of the School-Age Beginner 1 class, your child will move on to the School-Age Beginner 2 class.

The School-Age Beginner 2 class is the first class where we mix the kids from the Preschool Beginner 1 and 2 and the School-Age Beginner 1 classes.  By the time they get to this class, the difference in skills and coordination between the age groups is considerably reduced.  The big change in this class is the introduction of the skills required to do freestyle and backstroke.  Freestyle and backstroke are a natural transition from the elementary strokes, and they are strokes that our young swimmers will use to swim for fun or to complete a swim test.  In this class, your child will:

• Learning to float on the front and back for longer times and with more control.
• Learn advanced floatation exercises on the front and back to further increase water comfort.
• Learn a simplified version of backstroke that teaches that long/side postures, body rotation, arm motion, and leg motion.
• Learn a simplified version of freestyle that teaches that long/side postures, body rotation, arm motion, leg motion, and a simplified roll to breathe on both sides.

Upon completion of the School-Age Beginner 2 class, we strongly recommend that your child finish off the Learn-to-Swim phase by taking the School-Age Deep Water Beginner 1 and 2 classes.  If the days and times of the deep water classes don’t work for your family, your child can get started on the Endurance Building phase with the Intermediate 1 class until you can fit the deep water classes into your schedule.

School-Age Deep Water Beginner 1 will need to take place at pools with deep ends rather than at our Swim Studio.  We will use this class and the Deep Water Beginner 2 class to refine the skills and strokes they’ve already learned in a conventional pool; we think of this as adding “geography” back into the mix after learning the skills in a current.  In addition, your child will learn how to execute all of their skills in water where they can’t stand.  In the Deep Water Beginner 1 class, your child will:

• Learn to start and stop swims without putting their feet on the bottom of the pool.
• Swim at least 12 1/2 yards in the simplified freestyle and backstroke strokes from School-Age Beginner 2.
• Jump into the deep end, resurface, and exit the pool at the side without the help of a ladder or stairs.
• Tread water, deep water back float, and survival float on the front for at least 15 seconds and return to the wall.

Upon completion of School-Age Deep Water Beginner 1, your child should move on to Deep Water Beginner 2 and complete the Learn-to-Swim phase (whoo-hoo!).

School-Age Deep Water Beginner 1 teaches your child the building blocks of deep water safety and comfort; School-Age Deep Water Beginner 2 combines these skills into safety scenarios which build confidence and resourcefulness in water of any depth.  In this class, your child will:

• Extend the treads, deep water back floats, and survival floats to at least 30 seconds.
• Execute several deep water safety scenarios that combine entries, swims, floats/treads, changes of direction, and exits into real-life situations that your child might face.
• Build confidence swimming across the deep end using the strokes they know on the front and the back.
• Learn simple surface dives to get rings and other objects off the bottom in water of greater depths.

At this point, your kiddo has completed the Learn-to-Swim phase of our program.  Your child should be confident in the water, able to swim on the front and back, and understand their limits.  If it fits into your family’s goals, the next step is to fully build the freestyle and backstroke strokes and condition your child to swim them for longer distances.

The Intermediate 1 class does most of the heavy work on building rhythmic forms of freestyle and backstroke. Your child will:

• Swim at least 20 strokes of freestyle with fully rhythmic breathing.  While your child might favor one breathing side over the other, we want all our swimmers to be able to breathe on both sides before graduating.
• Swim at least 20 strokes of backstroke with good balance, straight-arm over-water recovery, side-to-side rotation and timing.

Upon completion of this class, your child will move onto Intermediate 2.  In that class, we’ll refine and extend the distance for freestyle and backstroke as well as introduce the foundations of breaststroke and butterfly.

The Intermediate 2 class further refines the freestyle and backstroke strokes, so doing a length of the pool in the Deep Water classes will be readily doable.  We’ll introduce the basic body positions and kicks for breaststroke and butterfly and integrate breathing into the motions.  Your child will:

• Swim at least 30 strokes of freestyle with rhythmic, bilateral breathing and more advanced and efficient timing
• Swim at least 30 strokes of backstroke with rhythm, flow, and rotation.
• Learn the foundations of the breaststroke kick and time the breath integration with kicking motion
• Learn the foundations of butterfly with the dolphin undulation motion

Upon completion of Intermediate 2, we strongly recommend that complete this phase with the two intermediate Deep Water classes.  As in the Learn-to-Swim phase, if the days and times for the deep water classes don’t fit your family schedule, your child can move on to the Stroke Mastery phase with the Advanced 1 class.  Once you can synch up your schedule with the deep water classes, you can proceed onto them.

In the School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 1 class, we return to the pool to work on extending our kids’ fitness to swim freestyle and backstroke.  We’ll also start teaching the kids how to dive into the deep end and how to turn around at the walls and keep swimming.  Your child will:

• Extend the deep water skills, treading water, survival floating, and deep water back floats, to 45 seconds
• Improve his or her flutter kicking form and conditioning by kicking in a vertical position for 15 seconds without arm support
• Swim a 25-yard length of freestyle with bilateral breathing, good balance, and accurate stroke timing
• Swim a 25-yard length of backstroke with good balance, rotation, and flow
• Learn how to do a competitive streamlined push-off to start lengths of freestyle and backstroke
• Learn to dive into the deep end culminating with a dive from a kneeling position
• Learn how to do an open turn and swim both freestyle from mid-pool, to the wall, turn, and return to mid-pool

Upon completion of School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 1, you will want to continue on to School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 2 and complete the Endurance Building phase.

In the School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 2 class, we finish off our Endurance Building phase and see our kids swim 50-yards (2 lengths) of freestyle and backstroke.  We’ll extend the skills of diving, turning, and deep water comfort as well.  Your child will:

• Extend the deep water skills, treading water, survival floating, and deep water back floats, to 60 seconds
• Increase the vertical flutter kicking time to 20 seconds while putting the body in more challenging positions
• Swim 50-yards of freestyle using an open turn with bilateral breathing, good balance, and accurate stroke timing
• Swim 50-yard of backstroke using an open turn with good balance, rotation, and flow
• Learn to dive into the deep end culminating with a standing dive in a stride position

Upon completion of School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 2, you’ve finished the Endurance Building phase.  Your child will have all the skills to expand their swimming conditioning to 100-yards of swimming or more.  If you would like your child to start to learn all four competitive strokes and competitive racing skills, the next step is the Advanced 1 class in the Stroke Mastery phase.

• Build up to at least 60 strokes of freestyle (~ 75 yards) with rhythmic bilateral breathing, better arm stroke and kick, and speed/tempo changes.
• Build up to at least 60 strokes of backstroke (~ 75 yards) with good balance and rotation, smooth timing, better arm stroke and kick, and speed/tempo changes.
• Learn competition-ready versions of breaststroke and butterfly with smoother, longer strokes
• Build up to at least 12 strokes of breaststroke (~ 25 yards) with proper timing and forward extension.
• Complete at least 6 strokes of rhythmic butterfly (~ 12 1/2 yards) with at rhythmic breathing.

At this point, we’ve learned the key drills and exercises that we need to do all four competitive strokes.  The next step is to return to the conventional pool for the Advanced 2 class.  This is the final class in our sequence and it’s purpose is to get our kiddos ready to train on a swim team.

In our custom-designed Swim Studio, your child will swim in a high-tech Endless Pool. Here’s why our Endless Pools will help your child learn faster and will make him/her a better swimmer overall.

We keep the size of our classes small to give each child more attention and practice. Our student-to-teacher ratio in our kids swim classes is 3:1 maximum in the Preschool (Ages 4-5), School-Age (Ages 6 and Up), Intermediate and Advanced 1 classes.  Our student-to-teacher ratio is 4:1 maximum in our School-Age Deep Water classes that we offer at the University of Illinois at Chicago pools.  Finally, our student-to-teacher ratio is a 6:1 maximum in our Advanced 2 (Pre-Team) class.

Our Pre-School Classes (Ages 4 and 5), School-Age Beginner 1, Beginner 2, and Deep Water 1 run for 30 minutes, while all the other classes are 50 minutes each.

Our classes run on a set 4-5 week session.  Your child will focus on learning a particular set of skills during that period.  At the end of the period, we will evaluate your child and either promote her to the next session or refine the current set for another session.  We will send you and evaluation at the end of the session providing specifics on your child’s progress.

In all of these classes, children are in the pool without a parent or caregiver.

Our group classes run year round. Enrollment in our group classes is open-ended. There is no official end date to our classes and you may join us for as long as you’d like. How long you remain enrolled in our classes will ultimately depend on your swimming goals. We recommend joining us for at least three months to see measurable improvements.  Within the first three months:

• Most of our Beginners will be comfortable in the water, swimming on their fronts and backs, able to roll for air or call for help, and starting the process of learning the competitive strokes.
• Children at the intermediate level will make a major progress in learning the high-quality competitive strokes to enjoy on vacations or pool parties, to pass a camp swim test, or to prepare for a swim team. After the initial 3 session period, you will continue on a month-by-month basis.

Tuition will run automatically each month for as long you are a student. You may discontinue at any point. The value of any remaining credits can be held on account, transferred to another account, converted to other services and products, or refunded to your credit card on file.

The monthly tuition for our Preschool, School Age, and Intermediate programs is provided in the table below.  For parents who want to speed up the learning process, we offer a 7% discount on tuition for additional weekly classes you book (e.g., the second class is at a 7% discount).

Preschool (Ages 4-5) — 30 Minute Classes

Class	Tuition Per Month
Preschool Beginner 1	$165.00
Preschool Beginner 2	$165.00

School-Age (Ages 6 Years & Up) — 30 Minute Classes

Class	Tuition Per Month
School-Age Beginner 1	$165.00
School-Age Beginner 2	$165.00
School-Age Deep Water Beginner 1	$165.00
School-Age Deep Water Beginner 2	$165.00

School-Age (Ages 6 Years & Up) — 50 Minute Classes

Class	Tuition Per Month
Intermediate 1	$247.00
Intermediate 2	$247.00
Advanced 1	$247.00
Advanced 2	$247.00
School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 1	$247.00
School-Age Deep Water Intermediate 2	$247.00

In addition to tuition, there is a non-refundable $25 annual membership fee to cover insurance and safety costs. If you continue on with us beyond one year (and we hope you do), you’ll be charged the membership fee on each anniversary.

Please be aware, a $25 cancellation fee will be charged to your account if you discontinue your classes during the first three months of your enrollment. There are no cancellation fees if you cancel after three months of enrollment. For more details about withdrawing from a class, see “Disenrollment from Automatic Tuition Renewal” on our Policies and Procedures page.

Yes we do! We also offer semi-private lessons if you’re able to recruit at least two other swimmers. Our private lessons last for 25 minutes for one to three students. If you purchase 5 lessons at once, you save 5 percent.

Not sure if a group class or private lessons are better for your child? Contact our office to schedule a 25-Minute Skills Evaluation. Our instructor will run your kiddo through a series of exercises to determine her current skill level and then will give you an overview of the skills progression that best matches her skills and goals.

Lesson Type	25 Minute Single	25 Minute Five Pack	50 Minute Single	50 Minute Five Pack
Skills Assessment	$60.00	N/A	N/A	N/A
Private	$90.00	$427.50	$175.00	$831.25
Two Swimmers (Per Person)	$60.00	$285.00	$120.00	$570.00
Three Swimmers (Per Person)	$45.00	$213.75	$90.00	$427.50

In addition to tuition, there is a non-refundable $25 annual membership fee to cover insurance and safety costs. If you continue on with us beyond one year (and we hope you do), you’ll be charged the membership fee on each anniversary.

When you register for a class, we charge your credit card that day for the first month of tuition. We will then set you up for automatic payment on the same day in subsequent months. We will keep you on auto pay until your child moves into a class with a different tuition or until you discontinue taking classes.

In addition to charging you for the first month of tuition, we will also charge you a non-refundable $25 annual membership fee to cover insurance and safety costs. If you continue on with us beyond one year (and we hope you do), you’ll be charged the membership fee on each anniversary.

If you withdraw your child from class within the initial three session period, you will be assessed a $25.00 cancellation fee.  For more details about withdrawing from a class, see “Disenrollment from Automatic Tuition Renewal” on our Policies and Procedures page.

Parents rave about our classes. We encourage you to check out our online reviews:
              

By default, we put all of our new students in our entry-level classes, Preschool Beginner 1 for 4 and 5 year old’s and School-Age Beginner 1 for kids ages 6 and up.  If your child has taken swim lessons at another provider, it’s difficult for us to determine by class names or skill descriptions where your child would fit into our sequence.  We put much greater emphasis on the foundational skills of facial immersions, floating, gliding, and stroke fundamentals than other swim schools.  Further, our classes use a particular language and set of exercises that might be foreign to your child.  We also think it’s never a bad thing for your kiddo to review the foundations before moving on.

That being said, we are open to your child skipping some classes in the sequence if he or she has the skills to do so.  If you would like one of our coaches to evaluate your child’s current skills, we will need you to sign up for a private skills assessment lesson.  To schedule a skills assessment lesson, you can contact our office at (773) 342-7250 or submit an online request for us to contact you.

Here’s the complete schedule for Kids Learn to Swim classes.  Click the Filters “three line” icon to filter the results by day of the week, time of day class name, and instructor.

See “What is the Cost for Group Classes” above for more details on tuition and membership policies.

Please fill out the contact form below to put in a registration request with our office.  If you have more than one child, refresh the page and submit additional requests as needed.  A member of our team will get back to you within 1 business day. If you would rather speak with someone, please feel free to call us at (773) 342-7250 during our office hours (Monday – Friday: 9 am – 7 pm | Saturday – Sunday: 9 am – 5 pm).