I had a child who went from not reading to reading at about a 5th grade level at the end of kindergarten. We didn't even know he was gifted until he hit the ceiling of the screener his school used to identify GT kids. He was an intense, sensitive, and highly inquisitive preschooler that was very interested in science. I thought all little boys that age were probably like that. In 3rd grade he is generally operating 3 or more years beyond grade level and he reads at a high school level. We are homeschooling now after a rough K and 1st grade year.
I have a newly 5 year old daughter who has not been tested. She declared she wanted to homeschool like her brother. She has read barely on and off for a while. In the past month she has taken off and suddenly "gets" it. I wouldn't be surprised to see her where here brother was in K by next summer.
In my kids cases, I think they both tend visual spatial and they are both just a bit perfectionist and lazy. Both had the tools (letter sounds, etc) to read forever. Their interests lay in other places as preschoolers (very active kids!) and we generally never really encouraged reading before kindergarten when we got out early reader books. Don't get me wrong - we are a book loving family (we could use our own library)! They both just enjoyed longer, more involved stories. It seems like once we brought out the easier books and declared they were readers, they caught on pretty quickly. They are both highly verbal too.
Anyway - I just wanted to say I totally know where you're coming from. My son actually seemed behind some of the other kids in his kindergarten class that had attended more intense preschool programs. By the end of kindergarten, we had serious problems with getting enough for him to do.
