Preschoolers who participate in swimming reach a range of developmental milestones before children who don’t, according to a new Australian study.
Researchers from the Griffith Institute for Educational Research at Griffith University surveyed 7,000 children younger than 5 in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States over three to four years and “intensively tested” another 180 3-to-5-year-olds.
Young swimmers scored significantly better than the average population on several skills important for their transition to school, including visual-motor skills, oral expression in literacy and numeracy, and mathematically related tasks.