How many letters could your DC identify at 3 years?

[mankymummy]

just curious...

so if you put the letters of the alphabet in front of them and said, where's letter so-and-so... how many would they get right roughly?

dd is just past 3 and recognises the letters in her own name, and B for my ds. So that's 4 letters. She knows numbers 1-9. my ds only knew his initial letter at the same age

My DD is 3.1 recognises all letters in upper and lower case and also numbers up to 10, and has done for a long time.

There are huge differences between children though, some of her friends recognise none but have far better fine motor skills than my DD, for example.

Children develop different skills at different paces. My DD was talking in sentences by the time she was 18 months whereas my DS who is nearly 17 months doesn't say any intelligible words, but is more advanced than DD was, in other areas.

At only-just-three, DS was reading fluently. He could recognise all the letters easily at two.

At 4.5, DD knows about half or two thirds of her letters (on a good day) - and still thinks it's 'a' for 'octopus'

Boring and cliched as it sounds, they all do different things at different rates. DS is now six, and still hasn't learnt that getting angry won't get him what he wants - a lesson that DD worked out yonks ago!!

at 4 ds 1 new about 10 ltters

at 14 he got 1 A* gcse and at 15 another 9

whoops knew

DD, can't remember but sure that she could do whole alphabet.

DS - none at 3 - only now at 4.5 can he do whole alphabet

mine could do any letter from about 2 he was obsessed.

Very amused to hear that hunkermunker's ds learnt all his letters from watching Countdown, , so did my ds, and from about the same age too. My input was very limited, mostly hooting with laughter when he first toddled up to the telly, pointed to a P and said "P" (how easily pleased am I? ). I think it really annoyed the very competitive parents of a little girl I knew, who were trying to teach letters using flashcards with less success......

yes countdown here too

Tom (2.6) does go ah, ba, cu, dur. He's not talking though.

ds aged 3 - whole alphabet
dd aged 4 1/2 - none at all

I'm not sure. But she did have a terrible crisis a few months back when I showed her a capital A. She had a huge tantrum during which she kept screaming "it doesn't have a curly tail" - turns out my sister had been showing her lower case letters and the contradiction between A and a was all too much.

Might have set her back a bit.

Redsplodge, DS1 used to "perform" when I least expected it - the looks I got from some other mums when he suddenly reeled off a load of letters or said "Dat's B&Q, Mummy and dat's Tesco!" - like I'd been hothousing him somehow (SOOO far from the truth it's unreal!)

Iorek, poor love - I've had similar conversations with DS1...! SO frustrating!

DD is 3.1. She knows A, D, B and M I think. She might well know more but I don't really know.

I can't remember what DS (4.11) knew and when. Am pretty sure he was less interested in letters when he was DD's age. But he knows all the letter sounds, can sound out lots of words and recognise quite a few other ones now.

dS2 is 3 and a half. He knows the letters of his name. That is 3 letters.
He can count to 20, and he recognises numbers, but he isnt really interested in letters and numbers.

he speaks two languages though, and is very interested in what things are called in the different languages, and will happily translate back and forth, and will get terribly stroppy if somebody else tries to translate for him.

I don't think either of mine knew any letters at 3, except perhaps the first letter of their names, though both knew numbers - DS1 up to 68 (the number of houses in our road!), DS2 up to at least 10. Both knew all their letters by 4, when they started school. In fact, DS2 was reading fluently by then and was recognising numbers up to 1,000.

Dd did not have the benefit of the Countdown education ( I couldn't concentrate with two of them running around!),so learnt her letters later, but by 4yo she did have a spookily precocious knowledge of Premiership footballers from ds's football cards.

DD could do all of them - but she couldn't do many of the physical things she was "supposed to".

All of them by 14 months. I could have conversations with him at 18 months, he could read by 3 and a half.

well whoopy do

DS1 all of them at 3
DS2 some of them
DD1 (2.11) most of them, if not all

Top tip - buy those foam bath letters. It's a brilliant time to teach letters.

I don't actually know...some, certainly, I don't think she knows ALL of them.

There is no great correlation between "knowing your letters" and reading or anything though, so I am not especially bothered. If you really want to start on reading early, best to start on some phonemes. It is pretty useless to know, at 3, that "h" is called "aitch". Better to know that it makes the sound "hhhh".

Dd1 knew all of them at about 2.10 and had just started to read at 3 (phonic blend). We did use jolly phonics from 3 with her.

Ds1 could identify them all by 18 months and read at just before 3 ( sight reads). Jolly phonics completely eluded him.
He's better at maths though. Everything he's learned has been in spite of us rather than because of us, I should add .

Ds2- completely useless in comparison, but can do a mean ITNG jigsaw. He knows 2 colours at 21 months.