Making Waves Swim School

This place is incredibly close to my house. Over the last couple years however, we had a family pass to the YMCA just a few blocks over. Since we could put my son in swimming lessons there for no extra cost, we just went there. However, my son has a bit of apprehension in the water. He gained some skills in their lessons, but he was stagnating over time.
We’ve known a few people who enrolled their children at Making Waves, and one thing I knew right off the bat that would make them ideal is the max of 3 – 1 child to teacher ratio. I can’t emphasize enough how important that is, as I watched my son at his previous lessons have to wait several minutes at a time for his turn when there were about 5 in his class.
From what I’ve seen, the instruction is also at a high level. One example is previously my son was learning to float by having the teacher hold him under his shoulders and pull them along the water. Here, the teacher actually helps support him more under his lower body. It makes sense, as the upper body is where the body floats, with the lower body being prone to sink being only muscle and bone. This technique seems to give the student a better sense of learning how and then trusting their body to float. They also do a great job of helping push students just outside of their comfort zone. Enough to encourage learning, but not enough to scare them too much. For example, for some of the lessons you’ll see the teachers count loudly to 5 as the student is doing their best to stay afloat when swimming, which seems seems a reasonable amount of time for them to push through, without worrying about being under too long.
Terrific facility as well, with a huge viewing area to watch the lessons, a play area for kids who may be waiting, and a nice change area. A terrific thing about this place is that they use salt water as a natural cleanser/​disinfectant for the pool rather than chlorine. It improves the smell, but I’m sure it’s better for skin too.
It is naturally more costly to attend here than most other places. I can’t fault them for that given the details above; but I wish they’d offer the 10% discount for the second child rather than only if you have 3 attending. Many don’t have 3 kids to begin with, and I think a 10% is still a fair deal if family have 2 children attending given the cost.
It is what it is, but ultimately, everything is at a high standard. One month of lessons in, my son has progressed at a rate that may have taken 6 elsewhere.

We love having such a great facility so close by. Love that the water is warm and they use salt rather than chlorine. Would prefer if they had a few more seats for parents wanting to watch their children swim as the school is always at capacity and there are alot of parents waiting and watching. There have been a few incidents of the pool being ‘soiled’ which makes me feel they should have a separate pool for the toddlers so everyone’s class is not cancelled due to the younger children having incidents. They do offer credits when this occurs however it is still a huge inconvenience. I think they should build another school on the same lot for the tots and so it is not as crowded.

This is a great pool.
It is a saltwater pool.
We’ve been taking our baby daughter here for a few months.
Recently change tables for the babies were added to the change rooms, this is a great addition.
It is a busy location especially in the spring and summer but they make an effort to stagger their scheduling to minimize the crowds.

This place was great! I was interested in taking adult lessons, but wasn’t too keen on taking huge group lessons with 10 other people, and didn’t have the money to get private lessons. Making Waves offers adult classes with max 4 students per class. There are mainly beginners there, but I was in one intermediate-​ish class so was able to challenge myself further with new techniques rather than re-​learning basic floats and strokes. My teacher was great and helpful and gave us (the other students and I) a good balance of learning new techniques vs practice time, and review vs challenges. They have classes for kids too, but not at the same time. During adult class time, there are only adults in the pool. I liked how my teacher was a bit older (university student), I have to admit. Most of the others looked like high school kids.

Check out the Salt Water swimming pools!
They have classes for babies and kids!
We host prenatal classes out of the Milton location.
2 more Locations are in Brampton