I live at the beach, and I volunteered for this. Most of the kids I am going to talk to are lower income and very likely don’t know how to swim. I can’t teach them how to swim (there’s just too many of the little yard apes and no pool for the loveable little monsters), I just have to teach them to respect the water. We did have some kids get swept away by the outgoing rip tide last year, so they need to learn what to watch for.
But they’re four. It’s a lower income pre-K class. I’m planning on talking about “swim with a buddy”. showing them how to wear a life jacket, and please, please stay close to the beach. All I got is picture books, my own questionable charm, and bad jokes.
Any ideas on how I can do this better would be greatly appreciated.
Yeah,** Dont do it!**, esp if the best that you got is bad jokes .
If they are 4 and cant swim, and if some of them already got swept away, and if there are too many of them to teach , then there are too many of them to properly take care of (even if you did know what you were doing,although it is clear that you dont)
"Swim with a buddy" is an insanely stupid idea if they dont all swim proficiently and dont know water rescue.
I don’t see any way to teach little kids water safety in an academic way like that. They’re either splashing around and getting used to the feel of swimming, or they’re sitting on dry land poking each other and giggling.
Nametag, I’m afraid the water safety handbook won’t be of much use. Remember that any materials I use have to be age appropriate for four year olds. Besides, I’m an ex-lifeguard so I already know water safety. What I don’t know is how to talk to 4 year olds. I did go to the library today and found a good picture book on the subject, though.
And everybody else, this is going to be in their daycare classroom. There may be too many kids, but there is no danger because it’s on dry land 8 miles from the ocean. It has to be simple stuff like “wear a life jacket”. Also, I am still going to use the swim with a (adult) buddy thing to try to get them to remember to have somebody watch them even if they are just wading in the waves.
I’m a mom of a seven-year-old, former assistant teacher at a preschool, occasional lifeguard, and author of Teach Your Kids to Swim. (You can see my blog at www.teachyourkidstoswim.com.)
Here are six suggestions, with the caveat that there’s no substitute for adult supervision when kids this age around the water.
Talk to their teacher ahead of time. Find out the rules the kids already know from preschool. (At our school, the only three rules were “Safe, kind, and clean.” Anything else built upon those rules.) Find out what signal the teacher uses to get quiet. (At our school, it was a hand up in the shape of an L for Listen. Some schools have auditory clues.)
Make it really clear for the kids. You need to aim for getting one, or at most two, messages across. Any more than that would be confusing. I’d aim for “don’t touch the water unless you’re touching a grownup’s hand.” If you can make your message grow from a rule they already know (e.g. at our school, I would have tied this into the rule that everybody needed to be safe), that will really help. If you can make the message visual and tactile, that will help, too.
Make it fun for them. Kids this age will love your bad jokes. They also love it when adults act silly.
Use call and response. After you tell them the one rule they need to remember, ask them questions that they can yell answers out to. For example, ask, “Can you touch the water with your toe if you’re not holding a grownup’s hand?” (They’ll love getting to be loud and yell back “NO!”) Other call and response questions to try:
Can you touch the water with your nose if you’re not holding a grownup’s hand?
(Use the same question for a bunch of body parts.)
Can you touch the water if you’re holding a grownup’s knee? (And so on.)
Can you touch the sand if you’re not holding a grownup’s hand?
Follow up the call-and-response time (half a dozen or so questions) with a review of the message. Attention spans at this age are short.
Have a simple handout prepared for teachers and parents emphasizing the importance of teaching kids to swim and of proper supervision and explaining the specific rule you’ve taught the kids.
If possible, ask the teacher to play a role-playing game with the kids a day or two after you’re gone, having them practice what to do if their toes touch the water when they’re not holding an adult’s hand. Reinforcing the message is really important, and play is a great way to get kids to really internalize something they’ve learned.
Good luck! Kids that age are very cute, but they can be tough to wrangle.
Life jackets do not protect against rip tides.
A kid wearing a life jacket will still get swept away into the ocean on a rip tide. Furthermore, if he is made to swim with a “buddy”, then you will have 2 kids getting swept away in a rip tide.
The best advice you can give to a bunch of 4 year olds who do not know how to swim or how to get out of a rip tide, is to tell them to stay out of the water.
Yard apes?? I hope to God that doesn’t have the same connotation where you are as it does here.
Four-year-olds need immediacy and repetition. If you’re not going to be speaking to them within a couple of hours before the outing, their teachers are going to need to refresh them, so you might consider a handout for teachers/chaperons outlining the major safety rules and a reminder (voice mail morning of, maybe?) to the teachers that they’ll need to go over the safety rules again.
God no. I’ve always used it to mean children, with no racial connotation. Like how the phrase is used here. I wasn’t even aware of the racist use till you pointed it out.
Bullshit. You’ve met pretty much the entire US in person, have you?
A Monkey With a Gun, the more common phrase, I think, is “house ape.”
Jesus, you might have said so; you seriously scared the crap out of me. I had an image of “Local Man gets water safety curriculum on message board – dozens drown!” in my head
OK, you are right, I have not surveyed every one in every villa in the US, so you tell me: In which parts of the US is it acceptable to call 4 year old low income kids who don’t know how to swim (or anyone else for that matter) “yard apes”?
Sorry about that. I certainly didn’t mean to scare anybody. Also, there’s no outing planed or anything, it’s a whole program of fire safety, don’t talk to strangers, not all dogs are friendly, etc, etc. I’m doing the water safety part, so when they do go to the beach with their families on some random weekend, they might remember some safe behavior.
As to “yard ape”, I don’t think I’m ever going to use it again. A simple google search pointed to a lot of harmless usages, such as the the one I linked to, but there were plenty of others where it was obviously racist. One of the links even pointed to fucking st*rmfront. And no matter how harmless my intent might be, if those assholes are using it, it’s wiser for me to just avoid it entirely lest I be misunderstood.
Also, there’s no outing planed or anything, it’s a whole program of fire safety, don’t talk to strangers, not all dogs are friendly, etc, etc. I’m doing the water safety part, so when they do go to the beach with their families on some random weekend, they might remember some safe behavior.