IndividualityVideoShoot-Released-11

Learning to Swim with Individuality Swimming

I am a firm believer that all children should be taught to swim and my kids have all had swimming lessons since an early age.

With the older kids, we enjoyed lessons at local-authority run pools and whilst the teachers were great, the better the kids swimming got, the bigger the classes and I felt they were not progressing as well as they should.

When Isaac was 5, we started lessons with Ruth, who soon became his favourite swimming teacher ever. He loved lessons with her and when she told us she was moving swim schools, it made sense to follow her.

We moved Isaac and Eliza to Individuality Swimming four years ago and Sebby joined them in September after completing his Turtle Tots program.

Individuality Swimming has been brilliant with the kids, they have small class sizes with a maximum of 5 children in a class at any time, which has meant their swimming has progressed much faster. They even managed to coach Eliza through a case of the ‘water wobbles’ when she first started – you’d never know it now, would you?

Ruth has continued to teach both Isaac and Eliza since joining and her background as an ex-competitive swimmer has inspired them both to want to work towards club swimming.

Isaac and Eliza IndividualityVideoShoot-Released-12

At the beginning of the year, Kristin Hughes, Managing Director of Individuality Swimming, created Dorset’s largest swimming school with the purchase of Swalings and she arranged a promotional photoshoot for her new marketing campaign with some of her students, and we were invited to be part of it.

Isaac - IndividualityVideoShoot

My kids are as happy under the water as they are on top of it and loved playing up to the camera and showing off their swimming techniques.

Isaac and Eliza IndividualityVideoShoot

Individuality provides Parent and Baby Classes, Small Group Swimming Lessons for up to five children, One to One & Two to One Lessons and Adult Swimming Lessons throughout Bournemouth and Poole. All these classes share a common focus, teaching the valuable life skill that is swimming to people of any age, from beginners to improvers.

Group IndividualityVideo

All the swimming instructors are STA and ASA trained and Individuality Swimming follows the ASA Awards schemes:

  • Ducklings
  • Water Skills
  • Distance Badges

At the age of 4, Sebastian has just completed his Duckling Level 4 certificate, Eliza has completed her 400m distance badge and level 5 water skills and Isaac achieved water skills level 6 and his 1500m badge before moving on to club swimming. See them in action below:

Swimming is currently one of the most popular leisure and fitness activities in the UK with over 2.5 million weekly participants aged over 16.

A passionate swimming instructor and business owner, Kristin learnt to swim at the age of 2½. She has since competed in swimming competitions across England and worked in a number of roles from Swimming Teacher to Lifeguard, Fitness Instructor and Studio Co-ordinator. She set up Individuality, to realise her ambitions and concentrate on small groups and one to one swimming lessons.

For more information about Individuality Swimming & Fitness, visit: www.individualityswimmingandfitness.co.uk or find them at https://www.facebook.com/IndividualitySwimming

To celebrate the completion of their recent promotional videos, they are offering a month’s worth of swimming lessons with Individuality Swimming & Fitness to one lucky winner AND a friend! All you have to do is visit this facebook post and follow the instructions. They will pick a winner at random on 5th April. Good luck…

Eliza’s My Little Pony Craft Party

For her last two birthday’s, Eliza has had a princess theme with her favourite princesses coming to her party to play games with her and her guests.

Although she toyed with the idea of having princesses again, this year she decided she wanted to do something different and decided upon a My Little Pony party.

Now getting Rainbow Dash and crew to turn up to a party just was not going to happen, so we got our thinking caps on. Thankfully the answer was there thanks to a networking group I co-run, as one of the members runs Made By Me Craft Parties and had lots of My Little Pony ideas.

Lexy offers three packages to suit any budget and needs: bronze, silver and gold and
provides aprons, tablecloth and all the materials and equipment for the craft party.  All I had to provide was the venue and the food!

Eliza wanted the whole class to go, but as the craft party is quite involved we whittled it down to 12 and hired out one of the new party rooms in Lemur Landings as my house is not big enough for that many children, especially on a cold January day.

The itinerary for the party was set:

  • Making their own pencil case
  • Making charms for the pencil case
  • Making a My Little Pony Tail
  • Making a My Little Pony Headband

They started the party by colouring in their very own ponies on a special paper which magically shrunk when Lexy applied heat – these were to be their charms.

My Little Pony Party

Whilst the charms cooled, they decorated their pencil cases with stencils, pictures, stickers and their names, then adding beads and the charm to the zip when it was finished.

My Little Pony Party

Next it was tail making time and the girls got to choose three different colours of organza to make their own individual tails, which were super simple to make with just a safety-pin and a ribbon.

The headbands were slightly more tricky as they involved cutting out the ears and then sticking them around the headband before adding more coloured organza but thankfully some Mums and Abbey were on hand to help.

My Little Pony Party

We allocated 90 minutes for the craft and over-ran slightly, but the girls really enjoyed making their creations and were all ready for some food and of course that all important cake.

My Little Pony Party

I want to say a big thank you to Lexy for running the party so efficiently, to the staff at Lemur Landings who not only arranged for Lola to come and say hello to the birthday girl, but made each child a balloon animal and hosted the food so well, the Mums for staying and helping with some of the trickier activities and my very talented friend Michelle for making such a wonderful Rainbow Dash cake.

Eliza's 6th Birthday

Oh, and of course a very Happy 6th Birthday to Eliza!!