New research out of Australia says that children who
are taught to swim at an early age hit certain physical and developmental
milestones faster than kids who learn later in life.
Over the span of three years, researchers surveyed the
parents of more than 7,000 children age 5 and under and found that the age kids
learned to swim correlated with when they began accomplishing certain skills.
In pre-school, early swimmers had better visual-motor skills
(like cutting paper and drawing lines and shapes), but also fared better as
they got older (i.e. understanding directions, math, and writing and reading
skills) (reported by Andrew Katz)
