This is my frustration and I know I keep posting on it but I'm hoping to capture as many ideas as possible.

To recap, DD5 has a SB of 162. When she was 2 we would find her in her room with a book open on her lap, crying. When we asked her what was wrong, she said “I can’t read”. We thought she would be an early reader but she hasn’t really gotten it. She still reads level 1 books in a slow, halting way (though she did randomly read a page from a chapter book the other day…but now I suspect that she memorized it).

It sounds crazy but this reminds me of potty training. I knew she could do it from the age of 18months. I would try to get her to use the potty and we would have a little success and then…nothing. Then I would drop the subject for several months. Then at almost exactly 2.5, one morning as we changed her (dry) diaper from the night before, she said “no more diaper anymore”. That was it! No accidents, no wetting at night. It was instant (and 12 months) potty training.

Maybe that was foreshadowing for the reading????

My DD begged me to teach her to read early. We had success with Hooked on Phonics.

DD (2.5) has been begging me to teach her to read and crying in her room, like your DD did "Help me! I can't read these words yet". So we started Letter Factory and she learned all her sounds in 2 weeks, and we are doing starfall, today she just sounded out her first word all by herself!

And you now she was the same way with potty training...I knew she was ready, we tried and tried, but she didn't want to....I would stop and try again, suddenly 2 months ago, she said "I don't wear diapers anymore" and that has been it.

i bet reading just clicks with your dd too like potty training did....HUGS

Honestly, I think there's really no way to predict when/how any child is going to learn to read. Reading is a very complex skill, and not all HG+ kids figure it out early. Is she upset about her reading ability? She is surely not behind the other Kindergartners?

I think your job at this point is probably just to keep an eye out for signs of dyslexia or a vision problem. If she doesn't have trouble in those areas, she'll figure it out when she's ready.

Is she visual-spatial? A lot of these kids seem to learn these skills almost overnight. My HG+ son didn't read before kindy, but jumped to about a 5th grade level during that year. I actually never even knew anything about the world of GT before that. If you don't suspect a vision problem or anything, just give it some time! She may just surprise you at some point.

I have a DD5 I am homeschooling this year because we pulled her brother out of school last year due to his GT issues. I'm discovering she knows all sorts of stuff I had no idea about. I thought maybe she'd be my ND-MG kid. Maybe not. She is not a "real" reader yet, but I get the feeling she's ramping up to be an overnight sensation too. Her learning style is looking a lot like her brothers. I always felt like he was holding back on me as a preschooler.

Leapfrog was what taught my son his letters and sounds. He started watching it at a few months old and I wasn't nearly ready to start teaching him his letters and he amazed me by learning them all in no time.

amazedmom, we did letter factory at around 2.5 and a couple of other leapfrog DVD's too. She got it immediately, that's why I thought reading would happen quickly. She can sound almost anything out but she just doesn't seem to be going to the next level.

I'll keep everyone posted...

Here is what worked for us: We read lots of ryhming books and had DS fill in the rhyming words. Also, once my DS got used to filling in story words, I would show him a word (i.e. moon), we would sound it out together and then he would be responsible for saying it everytime it appeared in a story. Eventually, we would work up to phrases that were repeated regularly ("I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am"). This is purely memorization (and not reading!) but seemed to help bridge the gap and made reading more interactive for both of us.

We also used letter magnets and made our own Word Whammer (ala "Talking Word Factory"). We'd start with "at" and then wham on a letter "r" and then replace it with an "h" and so on . . . All the great rhyming skills helped a lot. If your DD can already sound out the individual words, maybe it is time to make your very own sentence whammer???

I'm sure one day, she'll just be reading and you'll have no idea how it actually happened. My DC struggle with things for so long and then in a blink of an eye they are masters. Nothing is ever gradual- everything in our house happens in huge leaps followed by long, painful stops and then more huge leaps. It is hard to be patient when things are stopped and slow and the leaps are scary, amazing and exhausting all at once. Good luck!!