Discover our brilliant Baby Swimming Classes in Peterborough!
The Calmababy approach to baby swimming is well known for being gentle, baby-focused, progressive, and fun. Founded on over 25 years of experience and learning, we teach our unique swim program using our Calmababy-developed method. We encourage free movement in the water when your baby is physically and emotionally ready.
Our unrivalled local reputation and purpose-built Centre in Peterborough make us the perfect place to enjoy your baby’s swim journey. Due to the popularity of our program, customers attend our lessons from across Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, including Stamford, Market Deeping, Bourne, Oundle, Huntingdon, Wisbech, March, Chatteris, Spalding and the greater Peterborough area.
We built our swimming pool, especially for babies and young children. The pool temperature is a toasty 33-34˚C, and bromine provides sanitation with secondary disinfection via an ultraviolet light system.
Our baby swimming sessions focus on learning how to swim with your baby rather than just teaching your baby how to swim. This subtle difference makes our classes popular and effective; they enhance the parent-child bond.
The benefits of baby swimming:
- The body – supports overall healthy development, improves eating and sleeping, enhances coordination.
- The brain – swimming supports the progression from reflex to voluntary movement. Babies who swim regularly develop better both socially and mentally.
- The heart – enhances parent/child bonding and relaxation, promotes a sense of belonging and enjoyment of socialising.
How do we teach our classes?
Because our teaching method is sensitive to each baby and child’s abilities, we do not follow a rigorous training program for your child to meet a certain ability level.
Instead, our approach centres on bonding, having fun and swimming with your baby in an environment free from expectations and pressure to meet performance-based criteria.
We achieve swimming progression through our flexible lesson plans, working at your child’s pace.
We do this by:
- Reading cues and ‘listening’ to your baby: Every baby displays a set of facial expressions and body movements to communicate feelings. Learning about and ‘listening’ to this unique language ensures babies remain relaxed and happy in the water.
- Adopting a gentle approach: Remaining focused on the parent-child relationship and working to enhance bonding and attachment.
- Working at the child’s pace: Promoting freedom in the water at the right time enables confidence to flourish.
- Repetition: Repetition of activities enables learning; every week, the sessions repeat previously learned skills and add new ones.
- Giving attention to each of the four main milestones of development: rolling, sitting, standing and walking. Each developmental stage offers a unique window of opportunity in the water-based environment, characterised by certain reflexes. Working with these reflexes enhances baby development.
- Focusing on safety: To ensure every child understands the importance of safe behaviour around water.
- Having fun!
Baby reflexes and swimming:
Babies are born with natural reflexes that enable them to be underwater safely for short periods. This technique, known as ‘submersion’, can offer your baby a sense of freedom and enjoyment when practised correctly. Although we teach this technique, our classes do not focus heavily on submersion.
Submersion should be encouraged, not forced. We believe your baby should only be submerged when they are fully engaged and accepting of the practice. By offering babies and children expansive movement in the water, reflexes will naturally integrate and become conscious actions in their own time.
With thanks to Birthlight for the expert training, support and inspiration.
“I was super impressed by our first visit and can’t wait to come back! Probably the thing that really made it special was the impeccable service by every member of staff, from the lovely receptionist to the patient, approachable and understanding teacher. My child took a bit of time getting used to the pool but our teacher could not have been more wonderful in helping him go at his own pace. By the end he was grinning with delight.” Kate Moore
