I have a theory;

[LynetteScavo]

Children learn/ are ready to learn to swim and read at the same time.

What do you reckon?

No idea, have done Waterbabies with DS from 12 weeks, he's now 20 months and confident in the water and can "swim" 2 metres unsupported but is no where near ready to read!

my 10 year old has just read twilight - she can't swim at all, just kind of slowly sinks, lol

I learned to swim at 3 and read at 8.
DS learned to read at 3 and swim at 8.

So no I don't reckon.

Makes a terrible mess of the books.

Interesting theory.

My DS has just turned 4 and has had swimming lessons for most of his life. Only recently has he just started swimming properly and can do backstroke and frontcrawl for around 15 metres or so. He has recently shown an interest in learning to read and write.

I think the key thing is a combination of confidence, an ability to concentrate and the ability to understand what the teacher is saying.

I think you might be right in terms of their grappling with the concept. Baby swimming only works if you keep going with it, or they just forget and have to learn again, as it were.

lOVED your post zandy!

Thankyou, NanaNina.

Well ds1 could read quite well at 3, fluently at 4.

Despite regularly swimming from birth and having regular, proper lessons from being very small; he didn't swim properly until he was nearly 6.5

Ds could swim from about the age of 3 but didn't really click with reading until 7.

DD was about 4 for swimming and read fluently within a month of starting school at 5.

They both had swimming lessons since babies, but not the waterbabies one.

I could read at 3.

Learned to swim at 10.

I could read at 3 or 4 but still not very good at swimming now and was very panicky about it at 10!!

I know 4 year olds who can swim but not read.