DS is a very verbal child however! His abilities seem to advance in spurts. He started talking around 9 months, but only said a handful of words although we knew that he understood a lot more. The floodgates opened at 1y4mo, and by 1y5mo he was talking in very complete sentences. He seems to have a natural understanding of grammar and has always spoken very clearly, pronouncing every sound and syllable.
He learned the alphabet in order, counting to 10, and all the letter sounds in just a couple of weeks at two when he was given some stick on vinyl letters and numbers for the bathtub. It didn't occur to us to try earlier! His sight word vocabulary grew a lot between 2 and 3. He started writing on his own at 3, and wrote a letter to Santa that Christmas at 3y2mo. By 3y7mos, he *seemed* to be reading his own board and easy reader books, but we also thought he might have just memorized them. During this time, he was reading increasingly complex books with Daddy at night, and had become completely obsessed with spelling and sounding out words.
Then, on his fourth birthday he was given a lot of new books and simply started reading them. The floodgates had opened once again. Now, he reads everything he can get his hands on, for pure pleasure, (out loud) without many problems at all. He learned about punctuation very quickly and reads with such passion. It's really cute! When he gets to a word he has never seen before he sounds it out or asks for help and moves on. He has progressed very rapidly in the last couple of months and is probably reading between a third and fourth grade level now.
One other unique ability just surfaced. He is writing backwards. He likes to write words in the air with his finger, and started writing out a word for me. I pointed out that it was backwards to me, and without skipping a beat, he started writing backwards so that I could read it. Yesterday he wrote something on paper backwards and was delighted when I held it up to the window for him to read! Tonight DH asked him to read the cover of National Geographic upside down and he did it with no problems.
My DD6 developed just like this. It was pretty amazing for us too. The writing backwards thing was shown to us the same time her ability to write upside down was! She was playing at a friends house drawing pictures and she decided to write a note to her friend upside down and backwards! (It sort of freaked the friend's mother out
)
I would agree that if the preschool teacher things you need to do something, then you need to. Our preschool teacher kept asking us the same thing, and then asking us what they should do with dd for the rest of the year! We have been slowly getting things done now to get a full picture of her giftedness.
Good luck, and welcome!
