The Lily Pad Swim School

WELCOME to The Lily Pad Swim School!
If you are looking for great swim lessons, you’ve come to the right place. If you are looking for a fun, gentle approach to water and babies, you’ve come to the right place. If you are looking for expertise on stroke development and technique, you have also come to the right place! If you are looking for warm, clear water for year-round swimming, we’re HERE just waiting for YOU!

As in all of Gym Magic’s programs, The Lily Pad was founded on the principle of developing healthy, happy and confident kids through the teaching of sports. We firmly believe children are our most precious resource and are worthy of our greatest efforts. In the water, that means our philosophy is to gently reduce fear and foster fun and a love of swimming in all kids. Knowing how to swim is a life saving skill we’re proud to teach to the children of Las Cruces!

OUR POOLS
The best features of the learn-to-swim industry in the US and Australia were incorporated into the Lily Pad’s pool design – features you won’t find in regular public or private pools. Our state-of-the-art pools provide the best environment for teaching swimming and provide our specially trained teachers the safest and most effective teaching enviroment. Both of our pools are indoor, shallow, kid-friendly pools with warm water (88-90°) for year round swimming. Warm water isn’t just a luxury – it’s fundamental to teaching swimming! Blue lips, goose bumps and shivers take one’s concentration away from learning to swim and places a child’s attention on trying to stay warm and comfortable instead. Warm comfortable water brings learning to swim into the 21st century!

And what about clean? Our cutting edge water filtration system is better than state regulations require. Even our air is monitored by a state-of-the-art dehumidifier to ensure the pool area remains comfortably warm, not unbearably hot and humid, by bringing in fresh air from the outside.We did our homework and spared no expense to create an unsurpassed swim environment for Las Cruces that rivals those in larger cities like Dallas and Phoenix.

Our main pool (for children three years and up) has 30 foot teaching steps for students, multiple lane lines to separate classes, and a longer, deeper section for more advanced swimmers.The 30 foot teaching steps provide a shallow staging area for each class and provides additional safety.Our lesson plans incorporate tools and props because they have also been shown to enhance the learning process. In addition, portable “tot docks” (movable islands in the water) are utilized to personalize lessons to the needs of the students.Our baby pool is a separate smaller pool designed to provide a more private and safer environment for our youngest swimmers and their parents!

To accommodate our families, our dressing rooms are ‘family style’ so dads, moms and kids are always comfortable. We have glassed-in observation rooms for parents (and grandparents) to comfortably watch their student’s progress. For our members convenience, we also have a small ProShop that carries swim diapers, swim suits, towels, and goggles.
In short, our state-of-the-art pools were designed specifically to offer the very best for learning to swim and for adult water aerobics. Fundamental to both is comfortable, warm, shallow water. Our facility is truly unsurpassed in southern New Mexico and El Paso!

OUR CURRICULUM:
Our daily swim lesson plans have over a 30-year history behind them and have been used to teach over 100,000 kids to swim! We offer 12 levels of progression with beginning classes for kids of any age. For preschoolers, our lesson plans are theme-based to allow imagination to flourish and fear to diminish, a very important element! The use of themes has been shown to help young children overcome their fears as their imagination captivates their attention and places their focus on fun and games instead of anxiety and fear. For older children, classes emphasize fun and water safety skills in the beginning levels and stroke development and technique in advanced classes.

Our classes are first separated by age and then by skill level. Our curriculum is divided into the following broad categories:

•   WaterBabies classes for parents and tots to take together (children 6-35 months old)
•   Beginner classes (children 3 years and up)
•   Intermediate Beginner classes (children 3 years and up)
•   Intermedate and Advanced classes (children 5 years and up)

Each category features several classes with increasing difficulty. Every class maintains a strict student to teacher ratio because this is so fundamental to teaching swimming. WaterBabies classes have a maximum of five students to one teacher. Starting at six months of age, WaterBabies classes offer a great one-on-one experience for you and your baby or toddler. Our WaterBabies curriculum provides a safe, fun introduction to the wonderful world of water for you and your child. Using songs, games and various circuits, our specially trained teachers will help you and your child build confidence in the water in a gentle, safe and fun manner.

We maintain very small student to teacher ratios in all of our classes with a maximum of 5 to 1. When a class is full, it’s full – we don’t overbook our classes! (Reminder, register EARLY!) We keep classes small to promote individual attention for each student while also allowing kids to learn important social skills like taking turns. At the end of each class, parents are asked to ‘Come on Deck’ so that the kids can demonstrate what they learned that day and our teachers can discuss each student and their progress.

All of our classes continue year-round for consistent growth. Although summer swim lessons are always popular, kids will be safer if they already know how to swim before the summer season of pool parties and seaside vacations begin. Why wait ‘til the weather’s warm – there’s always warm water at The Lily Pad!

OUR TEACHERS:
A great facility needs to be matched by great teachers, and the Lily Pad teachers are exceptional with young children. Over a decade and a half of hiring teachers within various programs has taught us that attitudes and true caring are the most important issues in hiring; good training methods are then used to train our teachers in exact methods and techniques. We look for honesty, responsibility and a positive, fun-loving personality. When those attributes are matched with a love of teaching, you have a marvelous learning environment!

Safety is always first, so our trained teachers are in the water with the students every single class. And because safety has to be number one, water safety is woven into each daily lesson plan. Each teacher must pass rigorous written exams and complete 40 hours of in-water training before they can teach. Coaches are in the water (not standing on the deck watching) with the students every single class, plus our program operates with a deck manager on deck for busy times. Our coaches are CPR/First Aid certified and are trained to teach kids in safe progressions that reduce risk and increase student success. Quality instruction depends on quality teachers as much as quality lesson plans, exceptional pool design and proper maintenance.

Call Gym Magic at 575-523-1616 to check our current class schedule and find out which class is right for your child. Don’t forget to ask about our Family Discounts!

PLEASE SEE OUR “SWIM LESSONS”