Four-year-old can spell any 3 letter word but cannot blend any when reading

[Balalabab]

Not 100% sure where to post this.

Basically practicing 4 and a half year old phonics, words and blending to keep up over summer holidays.

He started at a school nursery last year so has already been taught this in school.

Please can someone tell me what they think about this…

• He can read every single letter phonic sounds individually

• When I put the cards down next to each other in simple CVC and he has to read and blend them he cannot do it. He can only do cat and that’s because I think he has sight learned it.

• If I reverse it and give him 3 cards of any 3 letter word and say make ‘dog’, make ‘hip’, make ‘fig’ he can instantly spell out all the sounds and place the, down in the correct order. Ie. ‘F…I…g… FIG’

Is this normal. It’s like he can do it backwards in all circumstances but not forwards for the simplest words. So he does know how words and sounds are working.

Does this mean he could be dyslexic? His dad is severely dyslexic and it something I have been worried about hence working on the reading so early for him.

If so what does that mean? Do we have to teach in a different way?

He starts reception next week and they are brilliant, but he’s in a state school and he’s quiet so I do want to support in anyway I can so he doesn’t slip between the cracks.

Thank you

Amidst all the noise of (probably very well-intentioned) advice, could I just add to relax about it all a bit. Kids learn at different rates and some are better at things at an earlier age but then fall behind later and vice versa. Early reading (or toilet training or riding a bike etc etc) doesn’t mean everyone else has a genius and your kid is a dunce. I say this as a parent of YP who has just finished first year at Oxbridge, but who didn’t read “properly” until well after age 7.

As a much older person this all sounds nuts to me - although obviously I realise there’s a lot of evidence for these teaching systems. But I wasn’t taught to read and write before reception class when I was five, I never went to nursery. I clearly remember the teacher putting up cards around the classroom walls with objects and their names, like a plane for example. We learnt that some letters make particular sounds in combination. We wrote the words in our exercise books. I remember really enjoying the lessons and we were all reading in no time at all. English went on to be my best subject along with spelling.