My son was 2 1/2 when his dad told me that he was putting the j-e-e-p (my son's Christmas gift so he spelled it out for me) in the shed and my son told us he wanted to see the jeep. I realized that was an easy word so I started spelling out other words for him when he took his bath--things that he could see in the tub like soap, tub, water, etc. and he would point to whatever I spelled. He absolutely loved this game and he especially loved to play it for older kids who would spell words for him. They would give him the hardest words they knew how to spell--usually science words--and he would usually get them right because, after all, he liked to read science encyclopedias. He loved the attention. It seemed like he didn't even have to think about the words, he just knew what they were as soon as they were spelled. I remember one time when he was about 3 1/2, I showed his very bright 11 year old cousin how he could do this. I quickly spelled out words like curtain and window and he told me that my son was getting them faster than he could. He then spelled out words that I wasn't sure my son had ever read and he got those right too.
When he was preschool age, he didn't go to preschool, but he loved being read to from How it Works books and Aesop's Fables and books that I thought should have been above his ability to comprehend but he just loved learning new words and especially those with more than one meaning because he could use these when making up jokes.
His reading ability didn't matter, of course, when it came time for him to start kindergarten. He couldn't or wouldn't color in the lines and that was what the teacher wanted to focus on.
I bought an easy reader book for him when he was 2 1/2 that he had never seen before and he was able to read it.
At that time, I had never heard of two year olds reading and I had certainly not tried to teach him to read. All I did was read to him with my finger underneath the words as I read. He demanded to be read to a lot and one of his favorite books before he had even turned one was a Dr Seuss alphabet book and I still have that book memorized because I read it too him so much. He could identify some letters at 12 months.
My daughter was reading at 4 but she went to preschool and I think she must have learned to read there. I thought four was early and she did very well in elementary school. She fit in better than my son because she was smart but not too smart and she could draw and color in the lines beautifully, unlike my son, so she was the perfect student. I have to homeschool my son.
