Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Greetings from an overwhelmed newcomer

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. He likes the Dinosaur Cove books and I just ordered some Captain Underpants for him. The other night, when he should have been asleep, we caught him reading Doctor Doolittle (the original book, nothing "Disney-fied" in this household!) under the covers.