Agencies – Swim Lesson Resources for Park Districts & YMCAs

Park Districts, YMCAs, Villages, and Councils

You can use any information found freely on this site in your program without licensing or written consent. The level structure, teaching tactics, formulas, and guidance we provide are available for everyone.

Membership provides you and your agency with tools to help implement or run your swimming program. When you subscribe, you’re paying for access to the tools, files, and training we provide, and the convenience of not having to come up withlesson plans, workbooks, and materials on your own.

If you use Swimming Ideas’ levels and tools, we’d appreciate a link on your website pointing tohttps://www.swimminglessonsideas.comand attribution, but it is not required.

All Access Membership makes the Aquatic Professional’s life easier and improves your Aquatics Program through training, resources, guidance, and tools.

Level Structure

Most agencies are familiar with the American Red Cross level structure with 6 levels for swim lessons. And most agencies change, adapt, or alter the Red Cross level structure.

They do this because Red Cross is broadly applicable to everyone. It targets all learning. That is good — it sets a standard — but it also allows for nuance and opportunity.

Swimming Ideas condenses the 6-level structure into 4. We offer supplemental classes and categories like Parent Tot, Guppies, and Swim Team.

Our main “levels” are designed for ages 3+ to learn going underwater to all four competitive swimming strokes. Each level has no more than 5 key testable skills but allows for many different things to be taught and done within each level outside the testable skills (safety, treading, etc.).

What Does Membership Give You?

All Access Membership provides your agency with a complete toolkit to run a successful swim program. Here’s what you get:

Whether you’re a park district, YMCA, village, or council, our membership makes it easier to deliver high-quality swim lessons. No licensing required — just practical, proven resources.

What's Included in All-Access

Being a member through All-Access gives you and every member of your team:

1. Teaching Swimming Online Course.
2. Level Structure Online Course
3. Essential Swim Skills Tutorial Video Course
4. Teaching Swimming Book PDF
5. Lesson Coordinator Handbook PDF
6. Visual Skill Sheets: quick reference guides for vital swimming skills of all levels (12 pages) PDFs
7. SwimSheets: custom hand-drawn progressions for level agnostic skills (Underwater and Glides, Crawls and Breathing, Breaststroke, Butterfly, Refining Freestyle) PDFs
8. General Lesson Plans: Levels 1-4, PDFs
9. Weekly Lesson Plans: Parent Tot (6 weeks). PDFs
10. Weekly Lesson Plans: Level 1 (4 weeks). PDFs
11. Guppies: Games & Goofiness
12. Weekly Lesson Plans: Level 2 (Two 4-week progressions). PDFs
13. Weekly Lesson Plans: Level 3 (4 weeks). PDFs
14. Weekly Lesson Plans: Level 4 (4 weeks). PDFs
15. Swim America Stations Lesson Plans (10 stations, 14 sheets). PDFs
16. How to Create Fun and Effective Swim Games eBook PDF
17. How to Create Fun and Effective Developmental Swim Practices eBook PDF

*Team members get access to everything and can download or view it with their own accounts.

We want your agency’s swimming instruction to be fun, effective, and easy to administer.

How to add new hires to your Team