Welcome to the internet’s biggest and best list of swimming games. You’ll find swim games for lessons or for competitive swim teams.
These are the games we use in both our own swim lesson program and our competitive swim team.
The swimming game descriptions follow this general formula:
- Category
- Core Skill
- Name
- How
- What
- Who
You’ll find more information on these categories, core skills, and game design in the book, “How to Create Fun and Effective Swim Games.”
Each game will give you instructions on how to play it, what exactly you need or how to describe the rules, and who it is appropriate to play with.
- Create Fun and Effective Swim Games – Tutorial
- Four great games to go underwater
- Games and Toys from Dynamic Aquatics with Kyndal
- Parent Tot Games and Songs
- Swim Lesson Toys and Games to play
- Swimming Game – 100 Point Swim
- Swimming Game – Activities on Ping Pong Balls
- Swimming Game – Alligator Walk
- Swimming Game – Back float contest
- Swimming Game – Bake a Cake
- Swimming Game – Baseball World Series
- Swimming Game – Buckethead
- Swimming Game – Challenge Day
- Swimming Game – Champion Swimmer
- Swimming Game – Choice Grid
- Swimming Game – Diving In
- Swimming Game – Driving the Stake
- Swimming Game – Duck Partner Kick
- Swimming Game – Election
- Swimming Game – Flick a Frog
- Swimming Game – Flip a Coin
- Swimming Game – Flip Turn or Open Turn Race
- Swimming Game – Floating toy hurricane
- Swimming Game – Glide through the Hula Hoop
- Swimming Game – Human Cannonball
- Swimming Game – If you’re Happy and you know it
- Swimming Game – Jumps
- Swimming Game – Kicking Battle
- Swimming Game – Legs on Fire
- Swimming Game – Log Roll Streamline
- Swimming Game – Monkey Walks
- Swimming Game – Noodle Race Partners
- Swimming Game – Parent Tot – Hokey Pokey
- Swimming Game – Personal Challenge
- Swimming Game – Pigeon
- Swimming Game – President’s Day Trivia
- Swimming Game – Ring Retrieval
- Swimming Game – Roll the dice game
- Swimming Game – Sharks and Minnows
- Swimming Game – Slalom
- Swimming Game – Spider
- Swimming Game – Statue Master
- Swimming Game – Streamline Launch
- Swimming Game – Streamline Line Walk
- Swimming Game – Streamline through Hula Hoops
- Swimming Game – Swimming Musical Chairs
- Swimming Game – Treasure Hunt
- Swimming Game – True or False
- Swimming Game – Turtle Swim
- Swimming Game – Underwater Picture
- Swimming Game – Fly and Back
- Why “Mr. Fox” is the worst swim game you can play
Buy the book now from Amazon:
Swimming Game – Activities on Ping Pong Balls
Seastarz Swim School was kind enough to let me post this here. I wanted to share this with everyone because it is an awesome idea. I have a few thoughts on how I assume this would work in both swim lessons and on swim teams. Category: Group Activity Core Skill: Coach’s Choice Name: Ping Pong Adventure This […]
Swimming Game – President’s Day Trivia
Category: Group Activity Core Skill: General Swimming / Quiz Name: President’s Day Trivia This game is actually a trivia portion with a bunch of little mini-games inside of it associated with each President. Holidays are a good excuse to do something different or new. I remember inventing the baseball swim game for our swim group during the […]
Swimming Game – Streamline Line Walk
Category: Group Activity Core Skill: Dryland / Core Strength / Streamline Name: [Streamline] Line Walk Ideas come from many different areas. This game was inspired by talking with another coach about her exercise training she was doing at her gym. The basic concept is like what I call an “indian run.” Thought I’m sure there […]
Swimming Game – Flick a Frog
Category: Personal Challenge Core Skill: Aerobic Workout (coach’s choice) Name: Flick a Frog I like to use props when I can, and some days they’re better than others. I happened to stumble upon a basket of little plastic frogs. Naturally, I wanted to figure out a way to incorporate them into my swim lessons or […]
Games and Toys from Dynamic Aquatics with Kyndal
I recently sent out an email asking about your struggles this summer. Through some conversation I got to talking to Kyndal from Dynamic Aquatics and she shared some wonderful information about games and toys that she brings to her clients for swim lessons. The following is information that she shared with me about what she […]
Swimming Game – Election
Category: Group Activity Core Skill: Swimming Knowledge / General Swimming Name: Election! We played this game on the fly on November 8th, the night of the american election. With the results in, and Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by 3 million, and Trump seeming the next president, it highlights some of the interesting things about american […]
Swimming Game – Baseball World Series
Category: Group Activity / Personal Challenge Core Skill: Swimming Knowledge Name: Swimming Baseball Were you caught up in baseball world series fervor? The Cubs finally won the series for the first time in 108 years, and in honor of their last game, we played “Baseball” at swim practice. It was AWESOME! The kids had a blast, and […]
Swimming Game – Personal Challenge
Category: Personal Challenge Core Skill: Varied Name: (Category of Game) You want to play games in your swim lessons and at swim practice. It makes your students more engaged because they have more fun, and it resets their attention allowing you to intersperse your repetitive practice with fun and interesting activities. Games are fun, and they […]
Swimming Game – Flip a Coin
Category: Group Challenge, Chance Core Skill: Coach’s choice Name: Flip a Race You’ll need two large coins. Quarters will do. The coach flips a coin, then a swimmer flips a coin. Swimmers take turns flipping one of the coins. There will be four options: Coach Heads, Swimmer Heads Coach Heads, Swimmer Tails Coach Tails, Swimmer Tails Coach Tails, Swimmer Heads […]
Swimming Game – Statue Master
Category: Personal Challenge (in groups) Core Skill: Body position, body control, mimicking Name: Statue Master Statue master is an interesting game that at first looks like you are wasting time or doing nothing. We first played this game with our beginning developmental age group swim team using the formula found in the book, How to Create Fun […]
