3 Areas of Development in Young Children That Swimming Lessons Can Help With
A child’s early years are a busy time. They’re learning so much and growing constantly. There are a lot of different activities that can help young children grow and develop. One of those is swimming. As it turns out, putting your child in swimming lessons can help in more than one area of development.
Spatial Awareness
Spatial awareness is awareness of the space around you and yourself in relation to it. It’s an important skill to develop, one that can help you safely interact with the world around you. Interestingly, the development of good spatial awareness has been tied to artistic creativity, the development of abstract thought, and success with mathematics. Virtually everything your child does in swimming lessons, from moving along the walls of the pool to learning to float, to learning to jump or dive into the pool helps develop their spatial awareness.
Auditory Development
Children are always listening, even if they might have you thinking otherwise sometimes. It’s how they learn to speak. As they are exposed to more language and learn to use it, they deepen their understanding of it. When they participate in swimming lessons, the words they use and hear are combined with action, furthering their understanding and comprehension. As they combine learning with action, they’ll be able to reinforce the things they’re being taught. They’ll also learn what it means to think about, understand, and follow directions, something that many parents will certainly find a positive point.
Visual Development
Most people experience the world in a very visual way. It’s something so ubiquitous to most of us that we don’t even think about the fact that our eyes track movement and that there are muscles that work to make that happen. Visual development takes work though, and it’s something that children can practice in swimming lessons. By combining the movement patterns practiced in swimming lessons with eye movements and movement tracking, eye-hand coordination is strengthened, as is visual perception. This can translate to improvements in areas like reading and visual-motor skills tasks.
Physical activity is vital for young children. It helps them learn spatial awareness and develop their auditory and visual skills. They also learn how to better control their bodies. All of these developmental skills are things that young children can work on improving when they participate in swim lessons.
It’s always a good idea to know what the expectations are before enrolling your child in swimming lessons. Click here to view SwimJim’s guidelines and policies today!
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