Anonymous wrote:I have a 1st grader and a PreK-er and have purposely spent most of our time outside running around and avoiding learning to read early. The older child didn't read when he started K. The younger PreK-er won't know how to read before starting K. Academics are pushed down to the lower grades with recess and PE becoming a rare event. Do your kids a favor and let them have fun. They will have their nose to the grindstone soon enough. You know, chained to a desk reading and taking standardized tests. Relax.

Not all early readers are taught to read. My dd started reading (i.e. picking up books she'd never seen before and reading the words) right around her fourth birthday. She never attended daycare and only went to a play-based nursery school three mornings a week. I was shocked that she figured it out without any formal instruction. I subsequently discovered that she was not particularly unique.

What do you consider reading? Bob Books? Dick and Jane? My 4.5 yo can do that, but only very recently has he started to. It's just the past few weeks that I can tell he actually UNDERSTANDS what he is reading, which is cool.

Anonymous wrote:I have a 1st grader and a PreK-er and have purposely spent most of our time outside running around and avoiding learning to read early. The older child didn't read when he started K. The younger PreK-er won't know how to read before starting K. Academics are pushed down to the lower grades with recess and PE becoming a rare event. Do your kids a favor and let them have fun. They will have their nose to the grindstone soon enough. You know, chained to a desk reading and taking standardized tests. Relax.

I don't know. I taught my children to read before kindergarten (when they were ready to learn) specifically because reading is fun.

Anonymous wrote:YES.

NO.

No. But DCUM braggarts like to make everyone else feel inferior. Don't let them. Your kids will thank you.

A long time ago another parent told me kindergarten is the great equalizer and not to stress out. They take kids at all levels and all types of experiences and it is the teacher's job to get them all at a certain point by the end of the year. I ended up backing off from teaching my youngest to read and she still ended up being a strong reader.

I think reading to my kids, having books around, and having library trips from a young age were more important than teaching them to read. At some point reading X minutes a day is part of elementary homework so the more excited they are about books in general, the easier it will be for you.

Most of the kids leaving my daughter's PreK class knew how to read by the end of the year. In her K class now, I would say 50% of the kids know how to read and I'm finding that most of the kids who attended preK do know how to read to some extent. We're in Montgomery County by the way.

I have a 1st grader and a PreK-er and have purposely spent most of our time outside running around and avoiding learning to read early. The older child didn't read when he started K. The younger PreK-er won't know how to read before starting K. Academics are pushed down to the lower grades with recess and PE becoming a rare event. Do your kids a favor and let them have fun. They will have their nose to the grindstone soon enough. You know, chained to a desk reading and taking standardized tests. Relax.

Depends on what you call "reading"......

So much is child dependent. I have four kids and none of them did any preschool and I did pretty much the same amount of reading etc at home with them. One learned to read at age 4, two learned to read in K and one learned to read in 1st grade. They can all read at or above grade level so when they learned to read had no impact on how good of a reader they turned out to be. The only correlation I see is love of reading. MY DD who learned to read at 4 still loves to read (she is 10) and devours books. My DS who didn't learn to read until the end of 1st / beginning of second) doesn't really enjoy reading at all. My other two (one DS and one DD) are in the middle, don't mind reading but don't love it.

YES.

Don't worry about it. Talk to the teacher. I had one accelerated reader, one who was just about level with his kindergarten class, and one who's currently slightly behind his class. My youngest child's Kindergarten teacher says that almost all of them will be reading at some level by May. Your DC's teacher will likely say that same thing.

No. And some of those "readers" really aren't. They are doing what I do with Hebrew (can "read" but it doesn't translate in my head to meaning).

When I was a kid in this area (early nineties) people freaked out about this too. There were kids in my nursery school who were reading beginner books at age 4, and their parents bragged. In kindergarden, some could read chapter books. In first grade, the "advanced" group read Beverly Cleary. By the end of first grade/beginning of second, there was pretty much no correlation between those who were advanced at the beginning of K and those who were not. Kids learned at different rates--and barring some LD like dyslexia, getting there later rather than sooner was a non-issue at the end of the day.

Anonymous wrote:Several of our friends' children are already reading at 4. I can't help but feel like my 4.5yo is behind. He is nowhere near reading. He can write all his letters though.

NO. Most kids learn how to read IN kindergarten.