Term 2 newsletter

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the first ever newsletter from Sea Turtle Swim School. I can’t believe that 7 whole weeks have already gone past. I hope that everyone has settled in and are enjoying their lessons as much as I am loving teaching them! We have worked hard to make the facilities we offer the best possible, but we are always happy to get feedback from families if there is anything we can do better.

Now, the main purpose of this newsletter is to remind everyone that next week is WATER SAFETY week. Every term I will dedicate one week to really focus on water safety issues. I will generally have a theme for each term, and this term I have chosen river and flood safety. As we are meant to be in the rainy season, I thought this would be a good time to look at this. Please make sure that your child does not wear their goggles into the pool next week. I’d also ask that parents and kids in the infant classes wear T-shirts, kids in levels 1-3 wear T-shirts and from level 4 up to wear shorts and T-shirts please. Everyone will be practising swimming with these clothes on and getting used to the feel of water in their eyes without goggles. These are really important water safety skills to have.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone of a few housekeeping issues, please.

• First a gentle reminder about food not being allowed in the pool area. This is not a rule made by me, but the Department of Health and endorsed by the Shire. Employees of both do like to drop in unannounced and it would be very embarrassing for all concerned if there was trouble about food!
• Second, you will see some new signs in the shower area. There has started to be a lot more water sloshing about so it would be really great if everyone could limit the shower time to a couple of minutes – especially when there are other people waiting to have their turn, too. Please also keep the blue mats for standing on to dry yourselves. Thank you!
• Third, while I really love everyone’s enthusiasm for their lessons, it would be wonderful if in the winter months you guys didn’t turn up TOO early for your lessons! There is limited space under cover and it gets a bit squishy and noisy when families are turning up half an hour or more early for their lessons. There is a very sweet little park halfway up Kadina Street that could be used for letting off steam if that was needed.
• Lastly, don’t forget that you can park in front of our garage. It’s my car that’s in there, and I won’t be needing it while I am in the pool teaching 😉

Finally, I wanted to update everyone on the turtle that the Swim School has adopted to celebrate World Turtle Day on 23 May. She is a flatback turtle, called Myrtle, from Eighty Mile Beach in Port Hedland. The flatback turtle is only found in shallow waters off the coast of Northern Australia and very little is known about it. By fitting satellite trackers to turtles like Myrtle, scientists will be able to understand these mysterious animals much better. If you would like to follow her yourselves, here is the link to her tracker: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=142721 She is very cute!!

Thank you again to everyone for the fantastic support I have received this term. I’d also really like to thank you for your patience when we have experienced the odd glitch, you’ve been really amazing. It has been so wonderful to welcome you to the pool and the amazing part of the world that I call home!

Best wishes and happy swimming,

Cathy