130. 1st Grade SSR. Sports played in Water

​What do you like to do on hot summer days? Maybe you go swimming. Diving or jumping into cold water helps you keep cool.

Would you swim on cold winter days? Lots of people do! They take part in water sports and train all year long. They need to find places to swim when it’s cold out. Many find heated pools for swimming in winter.

​To swim, people paddle with their arms and hands and kick with their legs and feet. Those who swim in races may pick just a few kinds of swimming to master for races. One kind of swimming is called the butterfly.

People swim fast in races. They go to swim meets to race. The person with the fastest time wins each race.

People who do diving tell stories of hard dives! They bend, turn, and twist before diving head first into deep water, with their toes pointed and lined up with their arms.

Judges score each dive. Scores are based on how hard each dive is and how it looks. Harder dives get more points than simple ones. The highest score wins.

Some people swim to music as a team. Each person copies the same moves in a way that goes with a song’s beat. This kind of team may have up to eight members making moves under water. They hold their breath for a long time, while swimming and kicking or floating in place, all at the same time. It is hard to swim in a group like that.

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Rowing boats is fun, but most rowboats do not go too fast. In the sport of rowing, the boats can go quite fast! These racing rowboats are called racing shells. Up to eight can fit in a racing shell.

One person doesn’t row, but sits facing the team. That person tells them which way to go and tries to get them to row together.

​Surfing is another kind of water sport. It takes place at beaches with big waves. To surf, people ride these big, crashing waves to shore.

First they sit up and paddle with their hands through big waves to get up enough speed to catch a wave. They may lie flat or stand when riding a wave back to the beach.