Teaching swimming lessons to young children can be difficult. They don’t like getting their mouth or nose wet, get eyes wet, and certainly don’t want to submerge. Often they cry just getting splashed, so teaching at that point is not going to happen. Tears are not inevitable but very common.

Then I found a Barbie mermaid.

I brought the Barbie Mermaid to the pool for my lessons because I thought it might be a good ‘girl’ type toy that was water-oriented and for one particular class; it was all girls. Five four-year-old girls in a class has a very one-sided genderness to it. A lot of colourful swim suits including a few ‘A Little Mermaid’ suits. It probably sparked my idea.

The doll also made me think it would be a great prop for demonstrating a variety of swimming actions.

So the Mermaid was a hit. Not only popular with the girls but also with the boys in the other classes, to my pleasant surprise.

Let me back up one step; to teach anyone to swim, lots of basic things must be done and every one of those things must be achieved before any swimming can be accomplished. With a popular Mermaid toy, getting a young swimmer interested in the water, was easy to do. The apprehension and fear was forgotten.

‘Watch Barbie put her hair in the water’ and then ‘now let’s all try that’. The scenarios are endless. The only issue I had was I had only one Barbie Mermaid, so it had to be shared but when I had it I used it to show while I explained. It didn’t take long before getting another. This toy was very engaging and the learning was quicker. Following the demonstration by Barbie, I would get the swimmers to try and if I was taking swimmers one-at-a-time I’d then give the Barbie to the next swimmer to ‘practice’.

It was very popular, helpful and in particular with a class group of only girls. One day I said, somewhat offhandedly, next week is Mermaid day! Every girl brought a Mermaid toy. It was amazing. I recommend you invest in a mermaid and enjoy the surprising results.