July 21st, 2016
Direct Support – Welcome to Mermaid School
Submitted by a Direct Support Person
My friend Alexis loves mermaids! I wanted to do something special for her involving them. I had heard of these ‘mermaid schools’ that teach you to swim like mermaids with a fin. So I did some research to find out if there were any mermaid schools around this area. I found one in Toronto called AquaMermaid Swimming School.
They had a bunch of different types of classes that were for both individuals or groups. I spoke to my coordinator at Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region and, with the green light, I set up an appointment for Alexis and I to have our own mermaid lesson!
We took the GO train to Union Station in Toronto. It was the first time Alexis had ever been on a train, which was very exciting!
We walked a few blocks from Union station to a pool in Downtown Toronto. When we arrived, Alexis was so excited.
They fitted us into our own mermaid fin before we started. It felt weird not being able to move our legs freely.
We learned how to swim frontwards and backwards with our tails on. We also learned how to do front summersaults, dolphin swimming, how to flip our tails out of the water, how to dive through a hoop and so much more. It was really hard to do at times… but we got the hang of it after a little practicing.
We took some photos after our lesson, so we can always remember our mermaid experience! After our lesson, we were pretty hungry, so we decided to grab some lunch at Casey’s restaurant. It was beautiful sitting outside on the patio, enjoying the weather. After lunch, we took the train back home after such an exciting day!
I decided that it would be really fun to create a craft that related our awesome mermaid experience. I came up with the idea of making mermaid themed frames so we could have a little souvenir to remember the day by.
Our frames turned out awesome, with shells, fishnet and starfish.
We had an amazing time becoming mermaids, and it was all thanks to our relationship with Extend-A-Family Waterloo Region.