Swimmer of the Month

In yet another post about my eldest...

I just received an email from the swimming company that my kids do lessons with.  They were asking my permission to name Matthew as their Swimmer of the Month for March.  His teacher had this to say about him:

The swimmer of the month is Matthew.  I have been teaching Matthew from the beginning of fall and ever single week I see a tremendous improvement! Matthew went from barely being able to do front crawl to being able to swim over four laps of it without stopping.  He is very open to trying new strokes and is working on whip kick on his front.  I'm so proud of him!  Keep up the great work Matthew!

Although the swim company would have allowed up for four kids in Matthew's class, because we're h/schoolers there was no one else at his level available during the afternoon; as a result he had private lessons for six months (though we haven't had to pay for that).  And as a result, his teacher is absolutely right about how much he improved from end of September through March.  He completed three levels, learned three new strokes, and his technique improved dramatically.

I can't remember if I mentioned this before - a couple of months ago, during Matthew's lesson, I was trying to locate him in the pool and was distracted by a young swimmer in the distance who had a beautiful front crawl stroke.  I watched for about ten seconds before I realize that it was Matthew!  He wowed me.

When he began with this teacher in fall, he couldn't swim quite half of one length of the pool; at the end of March, he swam 16 consecutive lengths, with only three ten-second breaks for the teacher to give him instructions for the next four laps.  He really, really progressed, in both endurance and skill.

The kids are just about to start their spring session of swimming - another eight or ten weeks of lessons that will take us all the way to cottage time in summer!

(I should add that Seth and Lizzie are also progressing well and have completed about 1.5 levels each during the course of the winter.  They also love the water and their lessons, and I'm so glad about that!)

Here's the picture I sent to them for their newsletter (taken in early February, before my computer and photo program began having problems communicating!):