External PE: swimming

27 December 202327 December 2023 Erika Malikova

External Physical Education lessons have been running at our school for several years. Every Tuesday Upper Primary students and every Wednesday Lower Primary students travel to other sports facility places to try new sport challenges. Last year I joined to supervise Upper Primary classes every Tuesday afternoon. Despite me being a Music teacher, my long life hobby is sports, so I found supervising kids at these sessions exciting. With some minor changes we usually decide and organise sets of sessions for tennis, climbing, ice skating, gymnastics, swimming and last year we also added golf. Swimming we usually do in Spring term, March and April. There are usually 6 sessions of one sport activity. This is not a lot but enough that kids can try, learn and improve thanks to it’s repeated every year. And it is not too long to become boring. The students have professional instructors, usually 1 instructor per 5-6 students depending on the type of sport.

Before our kids used to go to Petržalská Plaváreň, last Spring we went to OC Central Golem center. The instructors were very organised and at the first session they divided kids into several level groups. In a higher level group they gave kids more challenging tasks, in lower groups they were very patient with our kids. Every session started with a shower and quick warm up exercises. In the end kids could have a 5 minute crazy fun in the jacuzzi pool. There were also awards of completion of the course at the very end. What we also experienced were different views on if wet hair makes somebody get a cold. We, Slovaks, believe this, because our Moms always used to tell us to dry your hair otherwise you will get a cold. There has been some research going on, and this has not been proved. But for sure if we feel better with totally dry hair, let us dry it really properly!!