When did your child know the alphabet?

[TeaDr1nker]

I am curious to know really.

I was speaking to a friend of mine today who said that her DD (who will be 5 next week, so just started reception) does not know all her alphabet. She is concerned that her child will not make a good start with reading because of this.

At the moment, we are getting picture books back from school, with a sheet to talk to DC through the story.

I was a little surprised, as she felt that nursary had let her down by not teaching her DD the alphabet, but i thought her DD will catch up, and after all the school starts all children off on the same level.

Should she be concerned?

By 'knows the alphabet' I mean, for example, can tell you the next letter if you give them any other letter, and tell you the name of any letter. The kid doesn't know 'the song' She used to love it if you said the letters alternately e.g. she said A, you said B etc. She used to try and say them as quickly as possible. She did for a while make an attempt to learn it backwards (would mutter Z, Y, X and stuff) but thankfully for my brain she lost interest in that.

How do we really know if anybody actually knows anything?

Ooh, some P4C, like it! :)

My older dd was about ten when she learned the order of the letters so she could look things up in reference books. She didn't really feel the need to do so before then, so she didn't bother learning it.

I'm not sure how rapidly she could alphabetise words even now, given that she mainly uses online reference books and therefore doesn't get as much practice at looking words up in lists as I did when I was her age!