I love to talk about this one about DD6, My mom had given me those sponge letters, for her to play with in the tub. So at about 9 - 10 months she started asking "what this" and I told her, then we started playing find the letter. By the time she was a year she knew all her letters (and 1-10) At 14 months she spelled her name and asked me if that was her name. I had wooden letters in her room with her name spelled out so that's her learned it. At 18 months she was sitting at the kitchen table and all of a sudden said "Mommy, mommy begins with the letter "M" mmmmmmmmmmmmm" she understood phonics. After that she started reading street signs, street names and also became my back seat driver. "Mommy, how fast are you going, the speed limit is 45. What street are you looking for? We just pasted _____ street. At about 2 1/2 I figured out she had a reading vocabulary of over 500 words, so I put a book in front of her and she read 65 pages the first day. I don't know why I didn't do that earlier. As for when she started really reading I would have to say it was between 18 - 24 months.
The first time a stranger commented about her skills happened at a book store. The books at home were either too hard or too easy. So I had a lady at the store help. Another Mom overheard DD reading and when I was at the checkout she was telling me that it's a shame there aren't any good gifted schools in our area. It was the first time I had heard the term, and honestly I really didn't know the full meaning of what she was saying. The good news is that I do know now.
