Child Development
Child Development Articles
8 Fun Pool Games for Kids to Play Safely
Nothing beats a sunny day at the pool! But if you’re a parent, caregiver, or running a summer camp, keeping kids safely entertained can feel like herding cats.
That’s where structured pool games come in. Pool games are a great way for kids to stay active, practice sportsmanship, and forge summer memories.
Pool Games Every Kid Will Love
1. Sharks & Minnows
This game is perfect for larger groups and promotes teamwork.
How to Play
- Pick one child as the “shark.”
- The rest of the players are “minnows” who start on one side of the pool.
- The shark calls out, “Minnows, cross the water!” The minnows must swim to the other side without being tagged.
- Any tagged minnows become sharks in the next round. The game continues until one minnow remains. In this game, the predators lose!
Safety Tip: Space the minnows out to prevent collisions during the chase.
2. Marco Polo
This familiar game involves listening and strategy.
How to Play
- The player chosen to be “Marco” must close their eyes or wear a blindfold.
- Marco calls “Marco!” while moving through the pool. All other players must respond with “Polo!” to reveal their location.
- Marco tries to tag one of the players, who becomes the next Marco.
- Kids must stay in the pool!
3. Treasure Hunt
An adventurous game that taps into kids’ love for scavenging!
How to Play
- Drop items like pool toy coins, colorful rings, or small plastic gems to the bottom of the pool.
- On a countdown, kids race to retrieve as many “treasures” as possible.
- Whoever collects the most items by the end wins.
Safety Tip: Keep the depth kid-friendly and supervised to suit all swimmers’ abilities.
4. Pool Noodle Joust
Want to channel some friendly competition? Pool noodles to the rescue!
What Is a Pool Noodle?
A pool noodle is a lightweight flotation device. They’re typically long, cylindrical tubes made from durable foam.
Beyond their use as swim aids, they can serve as props for imaginative play. Their soft, flexible design makes them safe for kids to handle.
How to Play
- Two players are given a pool noodle and an inflatable raft.
- Their goal is to use the noodle to knock the other player off the raft.
- The last one remaining upright on the raft wins the round.
Safety Tip: Use only inflatables and keep the game calm — no pushing or shoving.
5. Octopus
This is the mother of all pool tag games. Nothing escapes the octopus!
How to Play
- Start with one player designated as the “octopus” in the middle of the pool.
- The others line up at one side while trying to swim past the octopus to the other end.
- Tagged players join hands with the octopus to create a larger “octopus” chain for the next round.
- The last untagged swimmer wins.
Safety Tip: Encourage swimmers to avoid aggressive tagging to keep it safe and enjoyable.
6. Splash Ball
This game is similar to water polo but with simplified rules.
How to Play
- Divide kids into two teams.
- Place goal markers (like pool noodles or cones) at either end of the pool.
- Players must pass and throw a beach ball into the opposite team’s goal to score points.
- The team with the most points when time runs out wins.
Safety Tip: Use a lightweight ball to minimize the chance of injuries during gameplay.
7. What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?
This dry-land favorite gets a refreshing aquatic twist!
How to Play
- One player plays “Mr. Fox” and stands at one end of the pool while the others line up at the opposite side.
- Players ask, “What time is it, Mr. Fox?”
- Mr. Fox gives a time from 1 to 12 — players swim closer that many strokes.
- At random, Mr. Fox can yell, “Dinner time!” and chase the swimmers, attempting to tag them. Tagged players become additional foxes.
Safety Tip: Make all participants stay in the pool and assign boundaries to prevent overzealous swimmers from leaving the safe zone.
8. Beach Ball Race
A fun and engaging team-building relay race.
How to Play
- Divide kids into two teams, one on each side of the pool.
- Give each team an inflatable beach ball.
- Players must push or swim the ball from one end of the pool to the other without using their hands, only their bodies.
- Whichever team finishes first is the winner!
Safety Tip: Ensure adequate spacing between swimmers to avoid collisions during races.
Pool Game Safety Tips
- Assign an adult supervisor who can handle any potential emergencies around water.
- Ensure all players wear flotation devices if they’re not strong swimmers.
- Supervise games and provide reminders about pool safety rules, such as no running around the edges, diving only in designated areas, and staying within the depth limits for each player’s ability.
FAQs: Fun Pool Games for Kids
Q: What’s the ideal age for pool games listed here?
Most of these games are suitable for kids aged 5 and up. Modify or supervise appropriately for younger children.
Q: How can I make sure my child participates safely?
Supervise actively, ensure children follow pool rules, and encourage calm, friendly play.
Q: Do non-swimmers need to sit out during pool games?
Not at all! Use shallow areas or provide life vests so non-swimmers can join the fun. Treasure Hunts and Pool Noodle Joust are great beginner-friendly options.
Q: Are pool games suitable for small pools?
Adjust the rules or restrictions to fit a smaller pool size. Games like Marco Polo or Treasure Hunt work well in limited space.
Q: What kinds of toys or accessories are safe for children?
Use soft beach balls, foam noodles, and non-slip inflatables to keep games safe and age-appropriate.
Q: How do I involve kids of different age groups?
Consider pairing older kids with younger teammates or alternating game rounds by age group to keep everyone engaged.
Q: My kids play rough — how do I control that?
Set clear rules before starting each game and intervene if necessary. Games emphasizing collaboration, like Sharks and Minnows, may work best.
8. What role does sunscreen play in pool time?
Always prioritize sunscreen for kids to protect them from harmful UV rays. Reapply every two hours or after extended water play.
8 Benefits of Swimming for Kids
Swimming is more than a fun activity for kids — it’s also one of the healthiest and most rewarding forms of exercise. And knowing how to swim can be a lifesaver.
From physical and mental fitness to life-saving water safety skills, swimming is the gateway to a healthier, happier, and more confident child.
This blog highlights the most powerful benefits of swimming for children, clarifying why every parent or childcare provider should encourage kids to take the plunge.
1. Builds Physical Strength & Fitness
Swimming is a full-body workout that engages nearly every muscle group without stressing the joints. It’s particularly suitable for children, as their developing bodies benefit from low-impact exercise.
Key Physical Benefits
- Improves cardiovascular endurance
- Builds core, arm, and leg strength
- Enhances flexibility and coordination
- Promotes healthy weight management
Children who swim regularly are stronger and more energetic in general. This makes swimming an ideal choice to keep kids active year-round.
2. Enhances Water Safety Skills
Drowning is one of the leading causes of accidental death among children, making early swimming lessons critical.
Water Safety Skills Include
- Recognizing and avoiding dangerous swimming conditions
- Floating, treading water, and basic survival strokes
- Confidence to stay calm in potentially unsafe water situations
These critical capabilities empower kids to enjoy water-related activities safely.
3. Develops Social Skills
Swimming lessons and swim teams are prime environments for children to build social skills. Kids learn to interact with coaches, fellow swimmers, and lifeguards.
Key Social Benefits
- Learning how to follow instructions
- Building friendships and teamwork skills
- Gaining confidence through group activities
Participating in a swim class can boost kids’ confidence and sense of belonging while also teaching them patience and cooperation.
4. Improves Mental Health & Emotional Well-being
Like other forms of exercise, swimming reduces stress and promotes happiness by stimulating endorphins, the brain’s “feel-good” chemicals.
Mental Health Benefits of Swimming
- Relieves stress and anxiety
- Boosts self-esteem through skill-building
- Enhances focus and mental clarity
- Offers a therapeutic, calming experience
For children with high stress or sensory sensitivities, swimming’s rhythmic nature can foster relaxation and emotional balance.
5. Strengthens Cognitive Development
Swimming has been linked to improved cognitive functioning in children. Studies show that it helps with brain development due to its unique combination of physical activity and coordination. Simply put, swimmers are smarter!
Cognitive Benefits
- Encourages motor skill development through synchronized movements
- Enhances spatial awareness and problem-solving abilities
- Improves memory and focus
Swimming’s cognitive boosts translates into greater learning potential in and out of the water.
6. Encourages Discipline & Goal Setting
Swimming lessons often include clear objectives, such as learning different strokes or achieving specific milestones. These elements teach kids the value of discipline, perseverance, and goal-oriented behavior.
How Swimming Encourages Discipline
- Following structured lessons and routines
- Working to improve swim techniques over time
- Celebrating achievements, big or small
Children carry this determination to other areas, including schoolwork and extracurricular activities.
7. Provides a Fun & Versatile Activity
Swimming combines fitness with fun, making it more appealing for kids than other forms of exercise. From playing games in the pool to learning creative dives, swimming offers endless opportunities for enjoyment.
Fun Ways Kids Enjoy Swimming
- Pool games like water polo or treasure hunts
- Recreational activities in water parks or at the beach
- Exploring aquatic environments like lakes or snorkeling
With the bonus of fun, kids are more likely to adopt an active lifestyle when swimming becomes part of their routine.
8. Boosts Immunity & Overall Health
Swimming in well-maintained pools helps improve lung capacity and promotes cardiovascular health. Additionally, exposure to various environments strengthens kids’ immune systems.
Health Benefits Include
- Strengthened lungs and respiratory system
- Improved blood circulation
- Enhanced immune adaptability
Starting the habit of swimming early can lay the foundation for a lifetime of better health and wellness.
FAQs: Benefits of Swimming for Kids
Q: When should my child start swimming lessons?
Children as young as one year old can begin water introduction classes. Formal swimming lessons are typically recommended starting at age four when developmental readiness aligns with learning basic swim strokes.
Q: Is it okay for children with asthma to swim?
Swimming is one of the best sports for children with asthma. It builds the lungs and is conducted in a humid environment that reduces breathing difficulties.
Q: How often should kids swim to see benefits?
Children should swim at least 2–3 times a week for maximum benefits. However, even just one session a week can contribute to fitness and water safety skills.
Q: What age is too late to learn swimming?
There’s no age limit to learning how to swim! While younger children adapt quickly, older kids and adults can gain water competency and enjoy swimming.
Q: Do children need gear to start swimming?
Basic gear like swimsuits, goggles, and swim caps (for kids with long hair) is sufficient for beginners. Fins or kickboards can help with advanced swimming.
Q: Are swimming pools safe for kids?
Yes, with proper supervision. Ensure pools follow health and safety standards, including clean water, trained lifeguards, and appropriate depth areas for children.
Q: How can swimming help children with special needs?
Swimming is often therapeutic for special needs kids. It enhances motor coordination, reduces stiffness, and offers sensory benefits.
Q: What’s a good way to motivate kids while learning to swim?
Celebrate progress — no matter how small. Positive reinforcement, fun games, and small incentives like stickers or certificates can keep kids excited about swimming.
5 Professional Tips for Better Swimming During Classes
If your goal is to practice your swimming techniques until you rival the pros, then you need to follow professional tips. The primary focus for competitive swimmers is to get as efficient as possible—deliver the most results for the least possible amount of effort. So, what are some tips the pros use for better swimming?
1. Put Technique Before Speed
You can jump into the pool and swim at maximum speed and intensity to get an excellent workout. However, this is not likely to improve your efficiency as a swimmer. Instead, you need to learn how to swim with focus and intent.
Sometimes, you have to go slow to see where your technique lacks. Starting each practice session aware and deliberate of your movements. Then, you can pick up the pace, focusing all the way on keeping your technique solid and not compromising for speed.
2. Be Open to Feedback
This is a tough one to embrace. Being open to feedback means being open to criticism, and even when it is constructive, that can be a blow to the ego. However, all great swimmers use feedback to inform their approach.
There are many things that you may not notice when you are in the water. You might not be spreading your hands as wide as you thought, or you might be getting weak in the elbow as you tire out. Having an expert give you feedback can help you be aware of the things you are doing wrong, while also helping you correct those problems.
3. Watch the Pros
Your ultimate goal is to be where they are. So, it makes perfect sense to study them and work on emulating them. Many YouTube channels specialize in professional swimming videos and critiques. So, not only can you see what the pros are doing and try to mimic them, but you can also hear feedback from experts in the field. Even the pros sometimes get things wrong, and knowing when they do sheds light on areas to improve.
4. Keep an Eye on the Numbers
There are a lot of numbers in swimming. You have stroke counts, stroke rates, intervals, heart rates, lap times, and more. If you love statistics, swimming is the sport for you.
But even if you aren’t an amateur statistician, if swimming is your passion, you have to keep an eye on the numbers. With them, you have specific metrics that let you set goals and monitor your progress. So, if you look at the right numbers, you get a very nuanced picture of your state as a swimmer. An amateur mistake is focusing on lap times and speed and nothing else. A professional looks at the complete picture.
Additionally, watching the numbers helps you stay focused on the fact that this is a journey. The goal is progress, not perfection. Even the best can acknowledge room for improvement, so never be too hard on yourself!
5. Practice Often
The pros make swimming look easy, but we rarely see how often they practice. These swimmers spend pretty much their entire lives practicing and perfecting their techniques. Getting to the point that a relaxed yet powerful stroke is second nature means spending hundreds, even thousands, of hours in the water, not to mention a consistent training schedule.
The Importance of the Right Swimming Home
No matter how good the tips, you cannot expect to become a professional-level swimmer without the right swim home. At the right facility, you will have access to the trainers and classes that fit your schedule and your needs. Professional instructors will be able to give you all the right tips and feedback, helping you focus on continual progress.
The right facilities also matter. Your skills can easily outgrow the pool you train in, and if your goal is to go professional, you need an Olympic-sized pool to practice in. At the right swim school, you can grow and flourish as a swimmer.
Turn to Blue Buoy for Your Swim Needs
Here at Blue Buoy, we trained multiple Olympians and world record holders. That’s because our instructors are genuine professionals and our facilities top notch. While our record speaks for itself, we invite you to take a sample class to see exactly what it is we have to offer. Achieve your swimming dreams with Blue Buoy.
The Top 5 Everyday Life Skills Swimming Classes Teach
We all know that the ability to swim is an important life skill to have. However, few people use this particular skill on a daily basis. Does that mean that swimming classes don’t have an impact on our daily lives? Not at all. In fact, we believe there are at least five everyday life skills swimming classes teach us.
1. Measuring Progress One Step at a Time
Having big goals is important; we should all have something important we strive for. But when you measure progress strictly by attaining those goals, it’s easy to burn out well before you get there or skip important steps with the hope of getting to where we want to be sooner.
Swimming does not allow for skipping steps, nor does it allow for measuring progress strictly by the big goals. It’s a sport that progresses in baby steps, even for the most talented of swimmers. Anyone who practices swimming for any length of time will be able to look at the big goals in life in terms of the little steps it takes to get there and feel rewarded by each little goal they achieve.
2. Having Patience for the Journey
Patience has always been an important skill. However, it’s rarer and rarer nowadays. Thanks to social media, one-day shipping, and streaming services, our culture as a whole is becoming accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it. Patience is no longer expected, making it an in-demand skill.
But as noted above, progress in swimming isn’t something you can rush. It doesn’t come in hours, days, or even weeks. Swimmers have to be ready to commit to frequent practice over the long term.
3. Accepting That Temporary Setbacks are Part of Life
Even the best of the best don’t win every time. Regardless, it’s human nature to be upset by loss. But, most people don’t enjoy being around sore losers. This means that we need to condition ourselves to accept that sometimes we are going to lose, and that’s okay. Success only comes through trial and error, after all.
Every swimmer will have bad races. Every swimmer will have those moments where their performance doesn’t reflect their full ability or the time they have put into practice. To keep going, they have to learn how to bounce back and learn from their mistakes. But, with some practice and perseverance and encouragement from our supportive swim classes, it won’t seem so scary.
4. Understanding the Trap of Perfectionism
Many people are natural-born perfectionists, expecting to always perform at their best 100 percent of the time. And when they don’t, they’re devastated. This doesn’t have to be in a competition. Even in solo practice, these individuals can be very hard on themselves.
Swimming is about progress, not perfection. Students are taught they can become good, even great swimmers, but perfect isn’t possible, regardless of medium. After achieving a goal, a new one follows shortly after. That’s because the process is just as important as the product. Thankfully, students can learn not to be so hard on themselves and celebrate what they achieve. This is beneficial for for all aspects of life.
5. Realizing That Your Mindset Makes a Big Difference
The difference between a good day in the pool and a bad day mostly comes down to the mindset of the swimmer. When you approach your practice or competition with the idea that it’s not going to go well, it will go badly. If you approach it with a positive attitude and belief in yourself, it will be a great experience.
This is true in all areas of life, from taking tests to giving presentations to interviewing for jobs. The sooner we realize the impact our mindset has on our success, the sooner we can learn to reframe our thoughts. Swimming is a fun and safe way to develop this skill.
Develop These Skills and More With Blue Buoy
These life skills may not be things you can put on a resume, but they’re skills that can carry people to greater success. Our instructors excel at helping both children and adults use swimming to improve themselves in and out of the water. If you want to learn more about our programs, stop by our school and schedule your sample class.
We look forward to working with you.
Woman’s Day: Benefits of Infant Swimming Classes Go Beyond the Pool
Woman’s Day – Benefits of Infant Swimming Classes Go Beyond the Pool
Katrina Vella
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Parenting
The 2009 National Drowning Report found that almost 60 percent of children under the age of five who had drowned had lost their lives in a backyard swimming pool.
Baby Steps with Swim Training
One way of stopping more and more children becoming part of this statistic is to teach children to swim at an early age — and a very early age at that.
A strong believer in teaching children to swim from birth, professional swimming coach Laurie Lawrence says teaching children to swim and become familiar with water could potentially save their lives and has major benefits on a child’s growth and development.
Laurie’s granddaughter has been being taught to swim since she was just four days old.
“My granddaughter at four days with her umbilical cord still attached was having water poured over her face,” Laurie says.
“Children are in the womb, they are swimming for nine months so you are just continuing that natural affinity,” he says.
“And while you are pouring water over their face you use trigger words so they respond to these verbal triggers and can soon learn to hold their breath on their own on command using these triggers.”
Laurie says his granddaughter at four months old was able to hold her breath on command by using the trigger “easy, ready, go”. He says the trigger needs to be rhythmically constant every time it is said for a child to familiarise themselves with it and what it means.
“Breath control is the first stage of any learn-to-swim program so babies are able to learn to swim from birth,” Laurie says.
“Just as parents talk to their babies from birth, the more you talk to them and read to your baby, the smarter and more familiar with talking they become.”
Laurie says the most important thing that children learn through swimming lessons is to be safe around water.
“Children who have swimming lessons realise how to become safer around water, because they begin to understand the difference between deep and shallow water and they are less likely to go into threatening situations,” he says.
He says there are four major benefits which he has observed of teaching children to swim from a young age or from birth.
Four Major Benefits to Child Swim Teaching
One: Those children who have swimming lessons at an early age, if parents continue these lessons, will have better developed motor movement. In other words they can coordinate their motor movement much better than those who don’t swim.
Two: Because these young children or babies are in lessons and they have to follow instructions, they improve their cognitive skills.
Three: A child who is involved in swimming lessons will develop their social and emotional skills further because they are involved with other children.
Four: Because they are being spoken to about their movement skills in the water and spoken to about colour, their language skills are developed.
Queensland’s Griffith University is currently undergoing a study into these four benefits of children learning to swim from a young age which Laurie has observed.
And it’s not just the swim school teachers who are involved in the process. Laurie says parents play the most important role in teaching their child to swim, just as they teach them to talk and walk.
“If it’s a parent and child activity it makes a huge difference,” Laurie says.
“The best teaching for young children is one-on-one and that’s the safest method of teaching,” he says.
“We teach the parents how to teach their child to swim and I emphasise the word swim and emphasise the importance of moving the child through the water.”
To watch the video of Laurie’s granddaughter being taught to swim visit www.babyswim.info
