Starting school gifted?

[BabiesDontNeedDaddies]

I got told that to be classed as gifted going in to reception all the kid has to be able to do is read a simple sentence, ie "a cat sat on a mat", and do simple addition/subtraction, like 7+2 or 4-3. That seems quite basic to me for gifted. Is that right? Or is it like a local thing since I don't live in an affluent area

My son started reception able to read CVC words (totally self taught, no hot housing here) because he learnt the alphabet and the letter sounds and one day aged three he sounded out c a t then yelped ohhh cat. We never pushed him to extend on this. His maths were at similar level but he couldn't write a single letter, let alone a word. A speech and language assessment when he 4 and three months found him to have the over all language skills of and eight year old with grammar and vocabulary of 9+. He was free reading just after Easter in year one and has never been restricted in a he can't go beyond this band at this age way. When he passed the level of bands they held in reception he had to pop along the corridor to the y1 y2 reading book area to pick a book. He has only started to show any interest or aptitude in drawing and writing in the last couple of months and needed a scribe for his y2 SATs. His y2 teacher has described his maths as "really quite astounding" no one has ever mentioned gifted to us. His friends include another similarly able boy and one who was still unable to read at the end of y1. They bond over a love of the same things not over reading levels.

Perhaps it would be easier if you told us what sort of level your DC is working at OP? In reading terms for example, I'd expect there to be a few kids who can sound out words but unlikely to be more than one reading Harry Potter. (Though if it's a catchment full of university professors and their families, or a selective private school, you never know.)

I do think peer group matters. Reception is mostly learning through play. Both free play and learning games set up by the teachers. A sociable child doesn't want to play on their own.

School attitude matters more though, working with older kids would have been ideal for DD until the classmates caught up a bit. And would have given her enough of a peer group to have a discussion.

As with speech, once they can all talk they can have conversations together, even if one is using wider vocabulary and longer sentences. Once they can all read and write they can read and discuss a book or write a story to the same prompt. It's not necessarily "caught up" because the early reader has probably moved on to something else, but caught up to a certain baseline does help. Maths is often more of a problem later in primary because the work set is rarely open ended the way writing a story or discussing a book is.