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My grandson can read fluently (K level), and will not be 4 until next month. I've been working with him all summer, and he's been doing My Baby Can Read since a toddler. He can spell also. Worlds like "mountain", and his first and last names. Problem is, he misses the cutoff of Kindergarten for his school by six weeks and can not enter Kindergarten until he is almost six. That is in TWO years. By that time (with the way I am working with him) he'll probably be at second grade level. He can recite the alphabet FORWARD and BACKWARD.
What do you think we should do? His dad knows the school superintendent. Testing to get him in Kindergarten early is my opt, but they probably cannot do it. Or wait a year and skip Kindergarten to get into first grade? There is a local Montessori, but it is beyond their means financially. Daughter wants to home school him to keep him from "dumbing down", but I think he needs a classroom setting with other kids.
I spend a lot of time with him, and he does seem to enjoy learning (we make it fun). He LOVES reading, numbers, and letters, and spelling. He plays UNO. At three!!!
Should I cut back on my teaching and let him watch TV? Am I making him go too far too fast? His Mom read at age 4, and I took her to the library, but I didn't seem to push her.
My grandson can read fluently (K level), and will not be 4 until next month. I've been working with him all summer, and he's been doing My Baby Can Read since a toddler. He can spell also. Worlds like "mountain", and his first and last names. Problem is, he misses the cutoff of Kindergarten for his school by six weeks and can not enter Kindergarten until he is almost six. That is in TWO years. By that time (with the way I am working with him) he'll probably be at second grade level. He can recite the alphabet FORWARD and BACKWARD.
What do you think we should do? His dad knows the school superintendent. Testing to get him in Kindergarten early is my opt, but they probably cannot do it. Or wait a year and skip Kindergarten to get into first grade? There is a local Montessori, but it is beyond their means financially. Daughter wants to home school him to keep him from "dumbing down", but I think he needs a classroom setting with other kids.
I spend a lot of time with him, and he does seem to enjoy learning (we make it fun). He LOVES reading, numbers, and letters, and spelling. He plays UNO. At three!!!
Should I cut back on my teaching and let him watch TV? Am I making him go too far too fast? His Mom read at age 4, and I took her to the library, but I didn't seem to push her.
Every Kindergarten teacher hears the same story from every parent ,every year.The child is bright ,great for you ,now stop and walk away.
I was an early reader, entered kindergarten spelling words. There are photos my teacher took of me spelling out animal names with sponge letters. I entered school at the age-appropriate time; anything else would have been a misstep, from a social development standpoint.
More and more children can "read" at 2.5-4 years of age. I've seen 3.5 year old children intuitively see linguistic patterns and can sound out (decode) articles from our local paper, The New York Times. These children are literacy precocious, but not necessarily gifted. None of these children could truly comprehend what they read and even when they read a children's book, their inferential ability was limited to their age-related maturity. One common fallacy is that early readers will continue to be literary precocious. Not necessarily. It often levels off and they end up in the same place as other children who started to read at a later age. Some children are toilet trained at 2 and others at 4. Everyone eventually learns how to use the toilet properly.
First of all, I would say good for you in the sense that you are encouraging learning. That is never a bad thing. If your grandson is truly gifted, however, it's not going to matter too very much how much you teach him in the sense that, if you let him watch TV some, he'll still retain information at a very high rate and he'll still enjoy learning at this age. If he's gifted, it's a little less about "what I'm teaching him" than it is "holy **** this kid has some serious ability to retain and logically deduce information and recognize patterns." That is the sort of stuff you can't teach, and your grandson very well might have it. Just don't feel like it's all on you or because of you. That's not a great starting place.
Secondly, if he really is gifted, throw 99% of the advice you'll get on this forum out the window. People say all kinds of things with little to no experience with educating the highly or profoundly gifted (but they'll have an opinion, nonetheless!). If he's in a decent school district, let him go to school and let the professionals there evaluate him in relation to his peers. If you're in a not-great or flat-out terrible school district, you might need to look into other options for private testing to see if/where/how either public or private schooling might help. Look up what your state and your district says about gifted education and how it is managed.
Until then, just enjoy having fun with a bright learner!
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All my kids could read when they were bumping on 4 years.
You GO, Grandma! Good job exposing him to learning.
No, I don't think it's a good idea to step back and let Tv entertain him. Keep exposing him to better learning.
I will say this. I've seen kids who are really very bright, and the family takes control of them and they don't put them with other kids, and the kids just turn out very awkward.
He will be fine, he has a family who is invested in his education and his future. It's great that you picked up on his "appetite " for learning! His intense interest, combined with your dedication is a positive. There doesn't seem to be any indication of what can very rarely be a concern with early readers:
I have the "gift" of Hyperlexia, defined as "precocious reading ability". It is considered now a "Savant" capability but in the 1970's when my Hyperlexia was discovered? It was known as being an "Idiot Savant" as it is almost 100% associated with Autism.
It is not due to instruction or early childhood "programs"; you cannot teach a child how to be Hyperlexic. They can just ... read, without being taught, at about the age of 2 years old.
When I was 2; I started reading the daily newspaper from front to back. Then I started reading my dads Newsweek magazine. I was reading at a 6th grade level in Kindergarten. And at a HS graduate level in the 2nd grade.
Usually, a Hyperlexic child will plateau in ability during adolescence & as an adult, be only slightly more advanced in ability than most college graduates.
I have "Atypical Hyperlexia"; in that I did not plateau. At age 18 I was tested & found to be in the top 2% of US college graduates in Comprehension. After that I received a letter from The White House regarding my "future". As of about 6 months ago I was reading at 1327 words per minute. Google (not just Google Scholar but regular Google) frequently aborts my online searches to have me "prove you are not a computer".
This ability IS a cause for concern: After completing the entire 7th grade required reading list before the end of September, I became bored & started to lose interest in school. When I started college at age 18? I did so with a baby & a 9th grade education.
There is a huge problem, when children are able to read information but lack the maturity to "process" it. I struggled with strange phobias; such as an intense fear of men in uniform, that developed after reading a Newsweek article about "US soldiers killing women & Children in Vietnam."
And once, following the reading of a 3 page investigative journalists recap of the search for Ted Bundy; I mistakenly assumed that I was in grave danger because my physical appearance was his "type" per the reporter stating that his victims were all "young girls with long brown hair parted in the middle".
There is also my tendency to transpose numbers because I'm reading so much so fast, that numerical digits serve as a "placeholder". If my appointment card is written to say "arrive at 3pm on the 2nd?" I might turn up at 2pm on the 3rd.
There is little known regarding Hyperlexia but if you are interested, I would suggest reading the research from the University of Wisconsin's website, as they have an active research program that studies all the Savant abilities.
There will be plenty of children who will be his age (and not due to intentional redshirting) in the class and just as brilliant as he is.
He has an advantage, let him use it for now.
Why not just see how he does in a classroom setting without his parents/grandparents teaching him?
He can always get pulled out for homeschooling if it doesn't work.
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