Questions for parents of children who were reading etc well before school

[PaintingRainbows]

Apologies for posting here but I felt people on this thread were likely to be able to give advice from their own experiences.

DD is 3yrs 9 months. Last September nursery called in a teacher to assess her and she was scoring a reading age of 7yrs 9 months (she was 3.1 years). Obviously it is higher now. She will be starting school in September as one of the youngest.

My questions are about how you prepared your child for school. Did you tell your dc in advance that other children were probably not going to be reading in the way they could? If you didn't tell them, was it a shock to them when they realised this or did they just take it in their stride?

At the moment, she has no idea and I think assumes that others at nursery are reading when they are looking at pictures in books etc. I like her 'innocence'if that's the right word but don't want her to feel like an 'odd' child when she does realise.

Hope this makes sense. She clearly is bright but is definitely not 'gifted' so handled right she should fit in just fine. A bit worried about posting in case people think we have 'hot house'd her but we discovered almost by accident when she was two that she was starting to recognise letters and was begining to blend 3 letter words words.

Thanks in advance

That sounds like an order OP

Absolutely

lol. What do you do as a job? I can't work it out. You sounded both like a HV (Mum will decide when to stop with Infacol) or certainly someone who does meetings.

SAHM and Parent Gov (and somehow PT LSA) ex solicitor - Does that make sense ?

to those of you with very early readers, do you find they also have very overactive imaginations?

DD1 really reacts to some things - for example at her gym class the theme one week was space. They were sitting in a row on the beam and the instructor started counting down 10, 9, 8 as if they were going to take off and go to space. DD1 completely freaked out, ran out of the class screaming, heart pounding. When i grabbed her to stop her running out of the door she was saying "no, no, i don't want to go to space"

no-one else seems to react quite like this. She has done it over some other things as well. I do try and tell her it's just pretend, and later she will laugh, but at that moment she gets totally caught up in it.

Thank you for all your lovely encouraging responses .

I'm hoping not to have to say anything further to her teachers when she starts as one of the questions I asked when we were looking around schools was how they differentiated for early readers. The one we have chosen has said she can skip all the early readers and phonics stuff so I am assuming she will either enter considerably further up the reading scheme or be a 'free-reader'. This made me realise however that other children will probably be more aware that she can read and vice versa, hence my original question. Really pleased with the feedback from your own experiences though and to hear that those of you who did go in to speak to teachers had a positive response in that respect too.

I'm sure she will continue to read and learn at her own pace at home. It would be nice if the school provided her with stimulating books but if they don't then we will anyway .

I think some of Roald Dahl is a bit scary too. I'm sure she would love the character Matilda but the headmistress is just evil! Esio trot would be okay though. Any others?

merryforge - I'd forgotten that we have the enchanted wood and faraway tree etc. They are the original versions but I'm assuming she won't make the connection with the Un-PC aspects. Mind you she might name her next imaginary friends Fanny and Bessie . She is currently has 10 imaginary friends (all with different characteristics!). We've tried to suggest she shares them out a bit i.e half a dozen going to stay with an aunty etc but to no avail. Does this count as an over active imagination Amidaiwish?!

Ahundred times - I'm sure you are right about the reading ability outstripping comprehension. A bit pointless if the child doesn't understand what they are reading. Last year when dd began reading we were quite concerned that there wouldn't be much around at her comprehension level but actually we've realised there are stacks of good appropriate books around. Much better than when I was a young child. Lucky dd . And all those classics to look forward to too...

ds's school were really good about him being an early reader. They changed the timings around so that a Yr1 child could do paired reading with him - so he didn't feel isolated. His teacher also arranged for him to read to the class at storytime once a week. This was seem as encouraging for the other children, valuable expressive reading for ds and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Whilst I agree about Miss Trunchpole - again seeing the movie (IMHO) leads to an understanding that all will be OK in the end, thus on reading the story she is not seem in the same light.

Painting Rainbows making mental note to self to keep eye open for Matilda video / dvd next time she's raiding the charity shops