Natation à la piscine (Swimming at the pool)

One thing I love that the French school system does is natation à la piscine. They start the kids when they are young, easily encouraged to over come fear and they don't have body image issues yet. Both Lilly and Clara benefited from the swimming program this year. It's quite a grand task if you think about it. They have to transport classrooms of children in big buses to get to the only public pool in town (it's at INSEAD where Taylor works). They have to get everyone dressed in swim-wear and then back in street clothes (most of this happens in the dead of winter when it's cold outside)! Then the biggest task of all - they have to instruct & watch hoards of children at the pool.
In the beginning Clara was quite anxious about swimming. There was NO free-play or free-swim in the pool. ONLY instruction. However, as she gave it a chance she decided she liked it. They used all kinds of floating devices to have the kids swim around, down and over in the water. Lilly's biggest complaint was that they kept her with all of the little kids (the ones her age!) and they didn't let her have a go in the deep pool.

This week both girls said, good-bye to one more aspect of their school life here in France. It's been quite an experience.