Ideas for Christmas Lessons from STA’s Aquatic Team

With Halloween over and the holiday season fast approaching, here’s some ideas for Christmas lessons from STA’s Aquatic Team.

Reindeer Rides

Each learner sits astride their woggle and pretends it is a reindeer getting ready to pull the sleigh for Santa on Christmas Eve.

• Learners can enjoy reindeer races across the pool
• North, South, East West game. The reindeer must prepare to visit all parts of the world on Christmas eve. With the learners mounted on their reindeer, the swimming teacher labels each part of the lesson area with the four points of the compass, when the swimming teacher calls out a direction the learners must race to the corresponding area of the pool, last one to arrive must perform a forfeit for example blow bubbles or collect a sinker depending on ability.

Packing the Sleigh

With the reindeer all ready to go the elves must pack the sleigh with all of the Christmas gifts. The swimming teacher places several large play rafts in the centre of the pool and a variety of floating toys around the lesson area. Learners must collect one toy at a time and place it on the sleigh (play raft) ready to deliver on Christmas Eve. This game can be made competitive by splitting the learners into two teams, the first team to pack their ‘sleigh’ wins.
Once the toys are loaded on to the sleigh, learners could take it in turns to sit on the sleigh while their team pushes the raft across the pool using a front crawl leg kick (careful learners do not get too close to the side they may fall off and bump their heads).

If there are no play rafts available, learners could be given a number of woggles and connectors in order to build a sleigh to hold all of the presents.

Christmas Carolling

In pairs learners submerge and take it in turns to sing their favourite Christmas song underwater for their partner to guess which song it is.

Down the Chimney

Learners practise jumping in, pretending to be Santa jumping down the chimney to deliver all the presents.

Sleeping Children

One learner is the sleeping child; the other learners are the elves helping Santa deliver all the gifts. The sleeping child and the elves position themselves at opposite sides of the pool. The sleeping child turns their back on the elves and, the elves attempt to creep up to deliver the presents, if the sleeping child turns around and catches an elf moving then that elf must go back to the starting point. The winner is the first elf to deliver their present and they swap places with the sleeping child to play again.

Delivering Presents

Santa has to travel a long distance to make sure every present is delivered on time and there are many obstacles. In two teams each learner in turn must try to negotiate all of the obstacles and place their present under the tree, appropriate obstacles could be going through submerged hoops, crawling over play rafts, over woggles moving around floating hoops. The first team to get all of their learners and presents through the obstacle course wins.