IN the wake of last week's inaugural Park Life swimming tips column, the main focus remains the frontcrawl stroke.

At Splish Splosh we teach frontcrawl as the first stroke with the prime reason being that I tend to feel it is the most easiest stroke to teach a child.

It is not over-complicated and helps the child build a lot of confidence in the early stages of learning to swim.

With other strokes, such as breaststroke, which are quite technical, the child tends to get frustrated and upset at not being able to pick the skills up easily. Confidence in the water is essential when swimming, so if you start to break that confidence in the begining it is hard to build on later.

At Splish Splosh, we have children from as young as two-and-a-half and three-years-old in the water on their own learning to swim.

When trying to give instructions to children of this age it is often difficult for them to know what you mean.

Below are some tips for the young swimmers: l Wheels on the bus - I always find this song useful. I ask the children to put their arms outstretched in front of them. We pretend that the bus has flat tyres and we then make the movements as though the wheels of the bus are moving round. The arms must be moving at different times - when one arm is outstretched, the other arm must be pulling back to the chest.

l Sticky fingers - I tend to ask the children if they like making things. Most children do and most children know what glue is. So I ask them to pretend that they have been making something in the day and that there is glue stuck in their fingers and they can't open them.

The closing of the fingers on any stroke is one of the most important items to remember. By closing the fingers the amount of propulsion in the water is maximised by keeping them open, all the water just passes through and propulsion is lost.

More hints and tips next week.