NZ Baby Swimming Pioneer to Address Global Audience

An innovative, New Zealand designed web-based tool for creating preschooler swim lessons is to be presented to a global audience in October. Christchurch based Water Discovery founder Jenny McPhail is to be the only New Zealander presenting at the World Aquatic Babies Conference 2009 to be held in Vancouver.

Jenny has been invited to discuss the issues faced by swim schools in addressing baby and toddler swim lessons and to introduce The Lesson Planner, a custom designed, web based solution for swim schools around the world.

Jenny founded Water Discovery (formerly Water Babies) in 1994 to provide age relevant introductory water experiences for the very young and has developed the Lesson Planner as a complete specialist lesson planning system for preschool aged children.

“Basically, most swim schools deliver programmes to babies and toddlers which are designed for much older children. I don’t believe this serves either parents or their young children very well so over the past 15 years I have designed a specialist programme specifically for babies and toddlers. The Lesson Planner is starting to make inroads into the global swim teaching scene and I’m very excited about taking it to the global swim community at Vancouver.”

The on-line Lesson Planner is designed to counter the resource and training problems universally faced by swim schools.

“I’ve studied the issues and have worked to counter them with a system that makes it really easy for swim schools to train teachers and to help teachers develop a high standard of lessons without reducing the teacher creativity required to effectively teach the very young.

“The Lesson Planner revolutionizes lesson design and swim school planning. It allows swim teachers within a school and entire swim schools to talk to each other and where appropriate, share information, lesson plans and ideas.

“And above all, it’s incredibly simple to use. It’s taken years to develop because I knew it had to be simple and had to compare favourably with existing methods in terms of lesson development time and swim school resources.”
 

Many New Zealand swim schools have adopted the programme and it has also attracted sponsorship assistance from multi-national brands including Huggies (waterproof nappies are an essential) and Tommee Tippee (the Tommee Tippee duck is a favourite in-pool toy and the Water Discovery mascot). The Lesson Planner is also promoted by Swim Australia as a swim teacher training resource.

“Our experiences with the schools that use the programme show that The Lesson Planner has the potential to significantly raise the quality of baby and toddler swim teaching.”

“The Lesson Planner is a resource that helps teachers prepare babies and toddlers to eventually learn to swim through the appropriate skill development. Vital to the programme also is the need to educate parents about water safety and their child’s needs around water. Water Discovery and The Lesson Planner helps swim schools to teach the parent and child to share the water experience in a way that is fun.”