Chapter 4

Water Games For Beginning And Advanced Swimmers

Races and contests are tailor-made pool games but remember that they are appropriate for older children only. Elimination games for young children are never successful; their participation is necessary throughout a game since they are not good losers and cannot take defeat gracefully. For older children who are all approximately equal as swimmers, races and contests are made to order. Do not forget, however, that they also like to play the games listed for beginning swimmers such as Diving for Pennies.

For the most part, children create their own fun, and each age has its repertoire of water games. For example, two children may spend an afternoon diving for a fin or catching a football in mid-air above the water; while six children may spend several hours paddling in inner tubes, diving through them, or tipping over the crew. Games are in order when your children are having a party that includes using the pool, or when numbers larger than six are using the pool, or if any group wants to do something a little more organized and a little more fun than paddling around.
  
You do not need to be a professional physical education instructor to direct these games; but you should be prepared to exert energy and attention, and it helps to have a fairly strong voice.   

Games for the Beginner Using the shallow end of the pool

In Lesson I of this book, there are a number of games which are described in detail. Ring-around-a-rosy, Pop Goes the Weasel, Fanner in the Dell, are some of these. They are already familiar to the children because they are all good land games.

Dive for Pennies: Scatter two handfuls of pennies in the shallow end of the pool. Children may keep the number of pennies they get. Large colorful marbles are fun to dive for, and trickier because they roll. Also, cellophane-wrapped candies are enticing, do not dilute the water, and are especially appropriate for parties. Only those children who are unable to pick up the pennies, marbles, or candies by diving should be allowed to use their toes.

Follow the Leader: You should appoint one child as a leader, and all of the other children are to follow him in whatever skills he pursues. Using the width of the pool, he may glide, stand on his hands, walk with his hands on his knees, sing under water, and if he can't think of new ideas, it is fair for you to suggest skills recently learned in the lesson plan. After once around the shallow end, the next child in line should be leader.

Ping-pong Blow: Using the width of the pool, each child blows a ping-pong ball while doing the dog paddle. He must not move the ball forward with his hands or his head. More , advanced swimmers can use the length of the pool.

Apple Push: Each child is to push an apple across the width of the pool using his chin or nose, but not his hands. This game makes use of the dog paddle and the kick. It would also be fun to use the whole length of the pool, and the game could easily be converted into a relay.

Cut the Cake: The group joins hands and forms a circle while”It”walks (or swims) around the outside of the circle. It cuts the cake by bringing his arm down between two members of the circle. These members swim or run around the circle in opposite directions. The first one back to his place remains in the circle; the other one is It.

Cut the Cake and other circle games are especially appropriate for a birthday party of children from five to eight years old.

Games for Advanced Swimmers Using the deep end or the entire pool

Most children would love a tether ball in the pool, but the hole to support the pole would have to be put into the pool as the pool was being constructed, and only few pool owners have been this farsighted. Volleyball cannot be played too well with an imaginary net, but a net for your pool could be rigged if you are an enthusiast. Water basketball would be fun, and perhaps worth the money to buy; or you can build a basketball backstop if you have several children whose ages run from around eight to eighteen. Only a few of the games listed below require equipment, and when they do, it is the kind the child or pool owner already has in his possession.

Whether or not you suggest a Dive for Distance, which is more like an individual stunt, or a race or relay will depend upon the circumstances. Many of the races or contests can be turned into relays and the relay games can be easily converted also.

The Medley: Swim one length of the pool in the following order: One length butterfly, one length back stroke, one length breast stroke, and one free style. Now this can be a race or the emphasis can be put on form. When children swim side by side, however, it is usually a race; and they do not attach much importance to form. If the width of your pool is around twenty feet, do not attempt to have more than three imaginary lanes.

Water Skills Spelldown: Played in a way similar to a spelling bee. Start with simple skills such as a glide, then go on to all of the basic strokes including the butterfly and the breast stroke. If you want to eliminate all but one contestant, a test to see who can tread water the longest, or who can walk on his hands in shallow water the longest, or who can swim the greatest distance on the bottom of the pool any of these will provide a winner.

One-arm Swim: Swim free style the length of the pool, using the kick and the left arm only. The winner, of course, is the one who gets there first.

Standing Broadjump: Have each contestant from a standing position jump feet first as far as he can into the water. Children can hurt themselves with a hard jump in shallow water, so this one should always be played in the deep end of the pool. The winner is the one whose jump covers the greatest distance.

Dive for Distance: Using the racing dive, have each contestant dive with the understanding that the winner will be the one who makes the greatest distance on his dive. Distance is measured from the point at which he comes up for air

Glide for Distance: Same as the above, except contestants are in the water and submerge, then push off and glide.

Tread Water Contest: See who can tread water the longest. Timing can be done either by counting or singing a song. Last one under is the winner.

Horseback Riders: The rider sits on the shoulders of the”horse”with his legs locked around his back. The”horse”holds on to the rider's legs. Each rider tries to unsaddle the other rider or riders, since any number may play. For the safety of his rider, the”horse”should stand in water at least chest-deep, and well away from either side of the pool.

Dip-dip Tag: An observer might suspect that an adult who hated noise had invented this game, since it is played in almost total silence. A group of twelve-year-old boys claim, however, that they originated it. Another form of tag, this game is played for the most part under the water in the deep end of the pool. It must keep his eyes closed at all times and try to find the other swimmers who must stay within a boundary which is established by a fin or a kick board on the deck before the game starts. The boundary is extended if the number of people playing is increased. The game starts with It on one side of the pool, and the other players on the opposite side. After It has counted to ten the game is on. When It comes up for a breath of air, the players who are also up call out”Dip-dip”if they are a”safe”out-of-arm's-reach distance away. The players within a generous arm's reach must however stay quiet as possible so as not to be discovered. The fun of the game is to try to swim directly over or under It without giving oneself away. It usually swims with arms and legs spread wide and often darts quickly in the hope that he may touch another player. As soon as he does, that person is It. If It swims out of bounds, he is called back into the playing ground. Anyone who peeks is a cheater; and cheaters are frowned upon and sometimes thrown out.

Relay: Supposing there are nine children, you divide them into groups of three in such a way that the swimming ability is distributed fairly equally. On”Go”the first three swim the length, touch the deck, make a turn, and come back to the starting place. They must again touch the deck before the second group may start. This is an important rule, because of the danger of diving on top of a teammate.

Carry an Object: As the man in track carries a baton, the swimmer carries some object in his hand as he swims the length and back again, and hands it over to the next swimmer. This can be an apple, or orange, or a length of toweling. It should be an object that floats. (Potatoes don't float.)

Egg-on-a-spoon Relay: Place hard-cooked eggs on a spoon. Hold the end of the spoon between the teeth. Start in the deep end of the pool, swim to shallow end, pass spoon and egg by hand to teammate who swims back to deep end carrying egg in spoon, and so on, depending upon the number playing.

Surface Retrievers Relay: Scatter thirteen or more corks on the surface of the water in the deep end of the pool. On the word”go”the child jumps or dives in after a cork. He is allowed to get only one cork, must climb out the side of the pool (no ladders or steps) and as soon as he drops the cork in a designated place such as a box, his next team member may go.

Deep-water Retrievers: Played very much like the preceding game except that the players must pick up objects which have been dropped on the bottom of the pool. These can be golf balls, potatoes, or any other sinkable item. If the items are small enough, the objective could be to see how many items could be picked up in one try. (Not fair to stuff objects into suit!)

All of these games have their counterparts in the games you have played out of the water. A pool is like a court, a place with boundaries, and within this place as on a tennis court or the magic circle of Farmer in the Dell you enter a play world in which you are someone else or perform heroic feats or possess magical powers. The significant difference between play in the water and on the earth is, of course, in the difference between the way these media support weight and volume, allow movement, and in the very different way water and air feel upon your skin, eyes, and nose.

Inner-tube War: Sitting in inner tubes, each tries to unseat the other person without upsetting himself. This can be played every-man-for-himself, or in teams, depending on the number of tubes available.

Inner-tube Race: This can be played as a race, using one or two lengths of the pool, but it is fun as a relay also. Swimmers may decide whether they want to lie on top of the tubes on their stomachs and paddle their arms, or sit in the tubes, and use their arms in much the same way as they do for the back stroke. In either case, no kicking; arms only.

Tag: In this game one child yells”Not It,”and the last person to say”Not It”is It. The rules for any tag game played in the water vary, but one rule holds for all, and that is that no one may climb out of the water, run on the deck and then go back into the water in an effort to make his tag. The simplest tag game: It tries to catch someone, and then that someone is It; but he can't tag the person who just caught him”no touch back. “Some of the variants of tag are:

Chinese Tag: If It touches someone on the neck then that person must swim with his hand on his neck until he in turn touches someone on the leg perhaps; then that person has to swim after the others with one hand holding his leg, and so on.

Underwater Tag: It cannot tag anyone who is completely submerged. If any part of his body is above water, and he is tagged, then he is It.

Body Tag: Before the game starts, decide what part of the body must be tagged by It. If the members all agree that It must touch the head, then he must tag another's head before that person is It. Different parts of the body become the object for tagging as the game progresses.

Tag with Floating Base: Use a kick board for a floating base. It cannot tag anyone who is on base.

Water can be as natural an environment for play as air, but if you do not think so, that is all right. What you might think about, however, is that water is a different and exciting world somewhat in the way that the rarefied world of the mountain climber is different. Or, if you are a science-fiction fan, and have imagined life in a fourth dimension, you will understand the way in which water can provide a dimension in which our sense of life is different and a pool is much closer than the moon.

Swimming is as close as a person can come to flying in the way a bird flies in that as the air supports the bird, the water supports the body, freeing it to dart and glide, or lazily paddle around. For anyone who already knows the water, there is no need to extol further the pleasures of swimming. But for anyone who does not know these pleasures and should like to, this book has been written.