Rollback to float
All students, even those as young as 6 months old, learn the fundamental ISR skill of rolling onto their backs to float, rest, and breathe. Infants and toddlers who are not yet walking well will learn to maintain this position until help can reach them, and it's just as important for our older students as they incorporate more swimming skills.
Refresher Lessons
Refresher lessons are extremely important in continuing and maintaining your child’s self-rescue skill development. Children grow and develop rapidly from infants to toddlers and into young children. This development process represents improved strength, coordination, and a more finely tuned cognitive ability. In accordance with this growth, children enrolled in ISR return periodically to participate in Refresher Lessons. Refresher lessons are designed to fine-tune your child’s existing ISR self-rescue skills to meet the demands of their growing bodies. It will allow them to make adjustments in their float and strengthen their swim. It’s not unusual for children to not swim and float at the same skill level that they did at their last session’s lessons. This does not mean that they have forgotten to swim or float, only that they need to practice their skills in their new, larger, stronger body. The length of the refresher lessons will vary greatly based on the child’s water experience and any interference that may have occurred since the last time they took lessons.
NOTE:
Previous Swim-Float-Swim students will take approximately 1-3 weeks to refresh.
Previous Rollback-to-Float students will take an average of 6 weeks to learn the Swim-Float-Swim sequence.
Maintenance Lessons
Maintenance lessons are also available during certain times of the year for regular fine-tuning of your child’s self-rescue skills. These lessons are highly recommended before going on a beach vacation or a trip to the lake to make sure your child is confident in the water.
What Will Your Child Learn?
What your child will learn, and the way he or she will learn it, is what makes ISR’s self‐rescue survival swimming program so different from traditional swimming lessons. Always putting safety first, ISR emphasizes competence, which leads to confidence, and provides the foundation for a lifetime of enjoyment in and around the water.
ISR lessons are designed for any child over 6 months of age. This is not a traditional swim class where they will be playing in the pool with other kids like a "Mommy and Me" or "Water Babies" class; this is a behaviorally based swim program that teaches survival swimming and self-rescue skills. This is a course designed to teach your child and their body how to respond and rescue themselves in a potential aquatic emergency situation. Parents do not get into the pool until the last week of lessons. (Read this comparison between ISR and traditional swim lessons.)
ISR is approximately a 6 week course, scheduled 5 days per week, Monday through Friday, for no more than 10 minutes each day. Children may begin lessons at 6-months of age as long as they are able to sit independently. Lessons are always taught at your child’s emotional and physical pace with safety as the top priority. Once students are completely skilled, they will practice their skills fully clothed. What your child will learn depends on his or her age and developmental readiness, but in all cases, at minimum, your child will learn to roll onto his or her back to float, rest, and breathe, and to maintain this position until help arrives.
Students are scheduled according to the individual needs of the parent and student and contingent upon time slots becoming available as other students finish their course. Early registration is highly recommended to better accommodate the time and dates you desire. (Read this overview for more information.)
ISR is an extraordinary program and we are constantly striving to expand in order to eradicate the child drowning epidemic facing our children
Swim Float Swim
As toddlers and young children gain more physical skills on land, they are ready to learn more skills in the water as well. ISR teaches children to swim a short distance, rotate onto their back to a floating position, and then turn over to continue the sequence of swimming and floating until they can reach safety at the steps, side of the pool, or shoreline.
