Abstract

In the face of the proliferation of programmes of “swimming” for children each time more younger, as in other activities more o less sophisticated for this same group, under the premise of “early stimulation”, this work reflects on the theore- tical approaches that support the programmes of intervention in the aquatic environment. Along with the general line of motor development in the individual, its also proposed to consider motor activity carried out in the aquatic environment as a different experience that contributes to the enrichment of the range of motor actions that the child has been acquiring in an apparently spontaneous manner during its first years of life. Without reaching any definite conclusions, the lines of intervention that assist what we call the deVelopment of the basic motor aquatic abilities, reveal themselves.