Aquapedagogic describes the modern, child-oriented approach in teaching to swim. In 2000, Uwe Legahn, PE teacher in Hamburg, defined Aquapedagogic in his book „At home in the water“ to emphasize the pedagogic approach as fundamental in modern teaching concepts.
As opposed to most teaching approaches in Germany that teach breaststroke – the most complex of strokes – as primary technique and mostly set the youngest age for learning to swim at around 1st grade, Aquapedagogics are based on the developmental stage of children and start teaching to swim at preschool age between 3 and 4 years. During the early stages of learning, correct stroke techniques are mostly ignored in favor of safety aspects and basic pedagogics.
Aquapedagogics, in contrast to conventional approaches, are based on uninterrupted education in water from babyswimming to competitive sports, one of the goals being to make children into safe swimmers long before reaching school age.
The central issue in Aquapedagogics is safety, i.e. “survival techniques” , comparable to components of cars such as Airbag, Safety Belt, Headrest and Crumple Zone.
Teaching these techniques, children will be safe and versatile swimmers long before school age.
They have a headstart of several years on their peers, they gain in self-confidence and social skills.
These children handel small accidents that happen daily with easy skill and find them unthreatening, whereas unskilled children more often than not react inadequately and are harmed or worse.
Aquapedagogics ensure a major step towards accident prevention. Aquapedagogics are a tried and proven educational concept to educate safe and healthy swimmers and reduce the number of fatal or traumatic accidents in water.
Teacher.
DELPHIN Akademie für AquaPäadagogik, Chief Executive Officer.
Born in 1947 as one of 4 children he went to primary school and started as an apprentice- officer with the Hamburg department of youth.
Finishing that he studied to be a teacher of physical education in the public school system where he taught for 40 years.
Since 1977 he devoted much of his free time to the teaching of young children to swim - something nobody else did, due to the firm belief, that a child is not capable of complex motoric learning before the age of 5 or 6.
He has run a private swimschool from 1977 to the current day.
They founded an academy (DAAP) to teach instructors in 1999.
In 2001 they initiated the founding of the German Swimschool Assc. (BvAP).
Book + video "Im Wasser zu Hause" 1999.
Book "AquaPädagogik, früh, sicher und vielseitig schwimmen" 2007.
DVD (Family-and professional version) "AquaPädagogik, früh, sicher und vielseitig schwimmen" 2012.
Founding of DELPHIN Akademie für AquaPädagogik 1999.
Founding of German Swimschool Assc. BvAP 2000.
Speeches and seminars worldwide (Europe, Argentina, New Zealand, China, USA).
He is a full blooded teacher.
Teaching and learning from teaching is his passion.
He is very lucky to say, that his work is also his hobby.
