DD is 3 and at a lovely nursery that has a teacher as well as usual nursery staff. When the kids turn 3 they start teaching them phonics. DD (now 3.3) has picked this up surprisingly quickly and can read 'the cat sat on the mat' type sentences. She seems to really love it - she is constantly looking for new words and stopping to read shop signs and words she spots in magazines. So I imagine by the time she gets to school in 18 months she will be properly reading and I'm sure there will be other kids in the same boat, whether from nursery or because they've been taught at home.
Yesterday I bumped into someone whose child is in reception at the local primary. Her DS had the same phonics book that DD got through in her first week of phonics. So my question is, how do primary schools deal with this? Do they give the children who can already read books at the appropriate level? Or do they start everyone from scratch? This school has more than 50% of kids with English as a second language so some definitely will be starting from the beginning.
And does it really matter? I don't want her to be a freakish child prodigy or anything 