La Petite Baleen Swim Schools

Petit Baleen in the Presidio is a kids swim school with strong instruction and a membership system that operates more like gym than a family program. Recurring billing, fixed class times, and added fees for schedule changes or pauses make the admin side rigid. The instruction is the value. They use a clear, step based curriculum, and classes stay on schedule. There are two pools: a warm infant pool and a larger pool for toddlers and older kids. I recommend it for kids two and up. For my six month old, the single class drop in option was useful. It taught me how to submerge him safely and gave me confidence for future swims.

We had a disappointing experience with this swim school. Our 5-year-old son attended for about a month, twice a week. Almost every lesson he had a different instructor. Even when he made progress with one instructor, the next one would start all over again, not knowing what had already been done. This repeated constantly, so there was no real progress at all. We reached out to the school several times, asking if they could provide the same instructor for both weekly lessons, but they said that was not possible. We were available every weekday after 5 PM and all weekend, yet they couldn’t find one consistent instructor. We also asked about private one-on-one lessons, but they only offered those during school hours on weekdays, which doesn’t work for most families with kids in school. Each group class had about four children, and in almost every lesson one child would be crying or wasn’t comfortable in the water, so the instructor had to spend a lot of time with that child. That left very little time for the others — our son probably got no more than five minutes of actual instruction per class. Overall, we were very disappointed. The instructors themselves were kind and patient, but the school’s organization and scheduling system just don’t work.

Wondering facility and staff! Our 4-month baby enjoyed his first swimming session and we decided to keep doing this each week.

I love this place! I did the infant swim from 2 months to 6 months free class and was not able to afford continuing classes. However the knowledge I learned from that 4 month course with my baby has given us both the tools to be safe around water. My baby is 1 now and we were at a pool swimming yesterday. My little guy was crawling in a 1 foot deep pool and went under, he immediately flipped onto his back and I grabbed him right away. He did not choke or inhale water, and he did not appear to be upset or freaked out, and I attribute that to the submersion practice we did at this school which I have Continued to practice with him over the last year. We did try another infant swim class at a different place which was more affordable but they did not teach anything in the class, it was more of a play time with songs. I am working on affording more classes here because I have definitely seen a difference between my little guy and other babies who have not had structured swim instruction like what LPB offers.

Perfect place for baby swimming classes ! We really like that they have an extra 3 make up classes per quarter (free or charge) and sometimes they offer workshops that you can do in addition to your classes (also free of charge). I wish that the teacher to student ratio was smaller (currently is 5 babies for one instructor). The classes are 30min long for $45 per class. Overall we’re pretty happy with this school.