Swim Maddie!!

Today Maddie had her first swimming lesson. This has been a long time in coming but we are so glad we finally were able to do it. A friend told us that the Jewish Community Center offered swimming lessons as a reasonable price. When I looked into it not only were they reasonable but the lessons are offered on Sundays. Easy on the budget, easy on the schedule, phew!
Waiting, waiting....we didn't go to church this morning to make sure we were on time for the lesson since we had to fill out paperwork.

Getting ready to get wet!

Bobbing! Maddie was timid at first but after a minute got her shoulders wet and chin in the water. Also kicking while holding on.


Then they kicked with kickboards.

They didn't do much with the kickboards though which I thought was good. After this the teachers had them practice pushing off the wall and do a stroke while kicking. Maddie was a bit confused by the pushing off part at first but they were patient and she did finally get it. The teachers were really good as well. They appeared to be high school or college age and there were 4 of them there all with eyes on the kids. It was good to see that they were being well looked after and with so much patience.

Maddie wanted to go to Camp Fowler this summer, the first summer she has reached the age requirement. While I had some other reservations about this whole idea the main issue was that she couldn't swim. I know they are good about not allowing her out where she would be past her ability (or non-ability?) but I thought this meant she would be missing out on a good portion of the fun and feel sort of left behind. So we struck a deal! Swim lessons this year and Camp Fowler next year. I think, in the end, it was a good decision for Maddie as well as us because there were no tears and not much pleading involved on her part. One more year will not hurt any of us although Daddy and Momma will still be nervous!

We are working toward 4H Presentation Day and the Merritt Gym Show! Maddie's presentation is going to be about kids during Colonial/Revolutionary times. The annual spaghetti dinner at church is coming up as well, the same weekend as the Gym Show. Brian will be cooking, Maddie serving and I will be baking cakes for eating and the cake auction.

I have been looking through our schoolwork and determining how we are moving along. We still appear to be on track to finish in mid-May which will be great. Next year we will be making some curriculum changes. Math will be from Teaching Textbooks. The math lessons are taught on a DVD then Maddie will work the problems in her book, Momma will check them and then she can watch the tutor DVD to get detailed explanations of the ones she might miss. If we like this program it will take us right through to pre-calculus!! I've yet to read a negative review of the program so hopefully we are all set there. We already made a change with spelling to something called Sequential Spelling. This teaches word families (in, pin, tin etc) rather than a seemingly random list of words. Maddie seems to approach spelling with a lot more confidence and we've only been using the new book for about 2 weeks. Yay!! I read a review of it here which helped us make the leap and change mid-year. So things here are "swimming" along! We are certainly looking forward to spring if mother nature would just cooperate.