Hi sweetpeas,
My DS5 was/is like that where he started reading around 2 (phonetically) and could within a pretty short time read most any word, memorizing the ones that aren't phonetic.
I think it was on here someone had a suggestion for a online reading assessment, wish I could remember the name of it, can't find it in the archives...we did that around late 3 early 4, I think it was $15. It was quite thorough, not just a reading level based on lists of words. I was surprised what a huge discrepancy there was between his scores at decoding/word-reading (ceiling), comprehension (around 5th or 6th grade at the time), and spelling (preschool or K level).
I think he just learned to read so long ago that he has so little memory of the slow sound-it-out stage that despite him being a phonetic reader it's just "too deep" to access easily for spelling purposes. Now at 5 he's still around 2nd in spelling. I think he's even forgotten things he used to love like silent Ps.
We hadn't up til now felt the need to actively teach him any spelling skills, he'll get a lot of it in school and even with the discrepancy he's still ahead. But we just started to work on it a little at home, mostly because he has a fine motor issue with printing. His confidence with writing is really low so we want to try to remove what barriers we can so that he has the least amount of frustration with it.
I think it would depend on what your goals are whether you actively address the spelling or not. You said he's preschool age now, if he'll go to K and 1st on schedule then there's an awful lot of repetition there to learn spelling and he may over those years get ahead on his own just through paying attention to how words are spelled. If he's happy enough to use invented spelling then that won't hold him back from expressing himself on paper. But if for example he's 4 and you are thinking of skipping K next year then some focus on spelling this year would keep from obscuring his other abilities in 1st.
Polly
