Kids Swimming Lessons (Ages 4-12)

Kids swimming lessons, ages 4-12, beginner, intermediate | Chicago Blue Dolphins Swim SchoolWhen you choose Chicago Blue Dolphins for your child, you’re choosing the most innovative children’s swimming program in Chicago.

We know that’s a bold statement, but we stand firmly behind it because we:

  • Use gold-standard teaching methods.
  • Conduct classes in our cutting-edge Swim Studio for faster, more precise learning.
  • Incorporate a mix of smaller, Endless pools and full-size pools that build swimmer fitness and teach a full range of swimming and water safety skills.
  • Use games, imagination and fun drill names like “Hot dog!” and “Superman arms” to keep learning fun yet effective.
  • Apply technology, such as instant video playback, for faster learning.

We’re extremely proud of the fact that our methods; our positive, patient and fun delivery; and our technology builds better swimmers because the children clearly understand what they’re supposed to do and how to do it.

 

What Levels of Classes Do You Offer for Kids Ages 4 to 12?

Beginner 1 & 2 - Pre-School (Ages 4 and 5)
Kids Learn to Swim Roadmap

Click to Watch Presentation

In these classes, your child will focus on:

  • Becoming comfortable and relaxed in the water.
  • Learning the basics of aquatic breathing (bubbling).
  • Becoming self-sufficient with floating, gliding, kicking and doing elementary strokes on the front and back.
  • Learning to float for longer times and with more control.
  • Learning the basics of freestyle and backstroke, including body rotation, arm motion, and kicking.
  • Rolling to get air without losing body position or momentum.
  • Learning the basic body positions and leg action for breaststroke and butterfly.
Beginner 1 & 2 - School-Age (Ages 6 and up)
Kids Learn to Swim Roadmap

Click to Watch Presentation

In these classes, your child will focus on:

  • Becoming comfortable and relaxed in the water.
  • Learning the basics of aquatic breathing (bubbling).
  • Becoming self-sufficient with floating, gliding, kicking and doing elementary strokes on the front and back.
  • Learning to float for longer times and with more control.
  • Learning the basics of freestyle and backstroke, including body rotation, arm motion, and kicking.
  • Rolling to get air without losing body position or momentum.
  • Learning the basic body positions and leg action for breaststroke and butterfly.
Intermediate 1 & 2 - (All Ages)
Kids Learn to Swim Roadmap

Click to Watch Presentation

In these classes, we will work with your child to develop a rhythmic form of freestyle and backstroke. The classes focus on:

  • Building up to at least 30 strokes of freestyle with rhythmic breathing and better mastery of fundamental positions.
  • Building up to at least 30 strokes of backstroke with good balance, over-water recovery, side-to-side rotation and timing.
  • Learning the foundations of the breaststroke by adding the arm stroke and learning basic timing.
  • Building up to at least 10 strokes of breaststroke with good pull-breathe-kick-glide timing.
  • Completing at least 5 strokes of rhythmic butterfly with at least 1 breath.

Once young swimmers graduate from Intermediate 2, they can join the Chicago Blue Dolphins Swim Team, where we continue to refine their swim strokes and also introduce key skills for racing, such as dives, turns and streamlining.

Advanced 1 & 2 - (All Ages)
Our Advanced 1 and 2 classes are designed to help get your kid’s strokes into a “competition-ready” zone. We’ll spend more time working on fully integrated and butterfly and breaststroke and build and refine our freestyle and backstroke. We’ll start working on more advanced topics like the arm stroke, kick, and changing speed and tempo.
We’ll heavily leverage our underwater video technology to help us quickly refine our strokes. We’ll demand greater control of the strokes by asking the kids to adjust their speed to match the current and swim for a longer duration.
  • Building up to at least 50 strokes of freestyle with rhythmic bilateral breathing, better arm stroke and kick, and speed/tempo changes.
  • Building up to at least 50 strokes of backstroke with good balance and rotation, smooth timing, better arm stroke and kick, and speed/tempo changes.
  • Learning competition-ready versions of breaststroke and butterfly with smoother, longer strokes
  • Building up to at least 20 strokes of breaststroke with proper timing and forward extension.
  • Completing at least 10+ strokes of rhythmic butterfly with at rhythmic breathing.
Deep Water Skills - (All Ages)
Many of you have asked us to work with your kids in a pool with water deeper than their height. We have had huge success with our Adult Deep Water classes and we’d like to expand into the kids space.
We’ll be offering the classes at the UIC Sport and Fitness Center (828 S. Wolcott Ave., Chicago, IL 60612). The pool is a 25 yard pool with a 5 foot middle and 11 foot deep end. We’ll work on deep water skills like treading and survival floating. We’ll also work on some pool skills like dives, push-offs, and turns.
Kids will need to be in or beyond the Intermediate 2 class to participate.

What Can You Expect from Our Kids Learn-to-Swim Classes?

What are the Pools Like?
In our custom-designed Swim Studio, your child will swim in a high-tech Endless Pool. Here’s why our Endless Pools will help your child learn faster and will make him/her a better swimmer overall.
How Many Kids are in Each Class?
We keep the size of our classes small to give each child more attention and practice. Our student-to-teacher ratio in our kids swim classes is 3:1 maximum in the Preschool (Ages 4-5), School-Age (Ages 6 and Up), Intermediate and Advanced 1 classes.  Our student-to-teacher ratio is 4:1 maximum in our School-Age Deep Water classes that we offer at the University of Illinois at Chicago pools.
How Long Do Classes Last?
Our Pre-School Classes (Ages 4 and 5), School-Age Beginner 1, Beginner 2, and Deep Water 1 run for 30 minutes, while all the other classes are 50 minutes each.

Our classes run on a set 4-5 week session.  Your child will focus on learning a particular set of skills during that period.  At the end of the period, we will evaluate your child and either promote her to the next session or refine the current set for another session.  We will send you and evaluation at the end of the session providing specifics on your child’s progress.

Are Parents in the Pool with the Kids?
In all of these classes, children are in the pool without a parent or caregiver.
What is the Cost for Group Classes?
Our group classes run year round. Enrollment in our group classes is open-ended. There is no official end date to our classes and you may join us for as long as you’d like. How long you remain enrolled in our classes will ultimately depend on your swimming goals. We recommend joining us for at least three months to see measurable improvements.  Within the first three months:

  • Most of our Beginners will be comfortable in the water, swimming on their fronts and backs, able to roll for air or call for help, and starting the process of learning the competitive strokes.
  • Children at the intermediate level will make a major progress in learning the high-quality competitive strokes to enjoy on vacations or pool parties, to pass a camp swim test, or to prepare for a swim team. After the initial 3 session period, you will continue on a month-by-month basis.

Tuition will run automatically each month for as long you are a student. You may discontinue at any point. The value of any remaining credits can be held on account, transferred to another account, converted to other services and products, or refunded to your credit card on file.

The monthly tuition for our Preschool, School Age, and Intermediate programs is provided in the table below.  For parents who want to speed up the learning process, we offer a 7% discount on tuition for additional weekly classes you book (e.g., the second class is at a 7% discount).

Preschool (Ages 4-5) — 30 Minute Classes

Class Tuition Per Month
Preschool Beginner 1 $150.00
Preschool Beginner 2 $150.00

School-Age (Ages 6 Years & Up) — 30 Minute Classes

Class Tuition Per Month
School-Age Beginner 1 $150.00
School-Age Beginner 2 $150.00
Kids Deep Water Skills 1 1 $150.00

School-Age (Ages 6 Years & Up) — 50 Minute Classes

Class Tuition Per Month
Intermediate 1 $225.00
Intermediate 2 $225.00
Advanced 1 $225.00
Advanced 2 $225.00
Kids Deep Water Skills 2 $225.00

In addition to tuition, there is a non-refundable $20 annual membership fee to cover insurance and safety costs. If you continue on with us beyond one year (and we hope you do), you’ll be charged the membership fee on each anniversary.

Please be aware, a $25 cancellation fee will be charged to your account if you discontinue your classes during the first three months of your enrollment. There are no cancellation fees if you cancel after three months of enrollment. For more details about withdrawing from a class, see “Disenrollment from Automatic Tuition Renewal” on our Policies and Procedures page.

Do You Offer Private Lessons?
Yes we do! We also offer semi-private lessons if you’re able to recruit at least two other swimmers. Our private lessons last for 25 minutes for one to three students. If you purchase 5 lessons at once, you save 5 percent.

Not sure if a group class or private lessons are better for your child? Contact our office to schedule a 25-Minute Skills Evaluation. Our instructor will run your kiddo through a series of exercises to determine her current skill level and then will give you an overview of the skills progression that best matches her skills and goals.

Lesson Type
25 Minute Single 25 Minute Five Pack 50 Minute Single 50 Minute Five Pack
Skills Assessment $55.00 N/A N/A N/A
Private $82.00 $389.50 $160.00 $760.00
Two Swimmers (Per Person) $54.00 $256.50 $108.00 $513.00
Three Swimmers (Per Person) $41.00 $194.75 $82.00 $389.50

In addition to tuition, there is a non-refundable $20 annual membership fee to cover insurance and safety costs. If you continue on with us beyond one year (and we hope you do), you’ll be charged the membership fee on each anniversary.

How Does Your Billing Work?
When you register for a class, we charge your credit card that day for the first month of tuition. We will then set you up for automatic payment on the same day in subsequent months. We will keep you on auto pay until your child moves into a class with a different tuition or until you discontinue taking classes.

In addition to charging you for the first month of tuition, we will also charge you a non-refundable $20 annual membership fee to cover insurance and safety costs. If you continue on with us beyond one year (and we hope you do), you’ll be charged the membership fee on each anniversary.

If you withdraw your child from class within the initial three session period, you will be assessed a $25.00 cancellation fee.  For more details about withdrawing from a class, see “Disenrollment from Automatic Tuition Renewal” on our Policies and Procedures page.

How Do Parents Rate Your Classes?
Parents rave about our classes. We encourage you to check out our online reviews:
              
What Is Your Class Schedule?
Here’s the complete schedule for Kids Learn to Swim classes.  Click the Filters “three line” icon to filter the results by day of the week, time of day class name, and instructor.

If you see a SIGN UP button next to the class name, there is space available and you can register online.  Please note that we only allow online registrations for the Level 1 classes.  If you would like to register for a more advanced class,  schedule a make-up, or put yourself on a waiting list for a class that’s full, please contact our office.

See “What is the Cost for Group Classes” above for more details on tuition and membership policies.

How Do I Register?

REGISTER NOW

If you see a SIGN UP button next to the class name, there is space available and you can register online.  Please note that we only allow online registrations for the Level 1 classes.  If you would like to register for a more advanced class,  schedule a make-up, or put yourself on a waiting list for a class that’s full, please contact our office.

See “What is the Cost for Group Classes” above for more details on tuition and membership policies.

I'd Prefer to Register with Your Office
If you would rather speak with someone, please feel free to call us at (773) 342-7250 during our office hours (Monday – Friday: 9 am – 7 pm | Saturday – Sunday: 9 am – 5 pm). You can also provide your contact information below, and a member of our team will get back to you within 1 business day.

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