Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion spelling interest - when does it start?

Hello again All -

my DS 5.5 has an interest in spelling. In a way, it seemss odd to me becaue he is not yet a fluent reader. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense because he has always loved words and language and pays attention when he sees and hears them.

Now the question. For your DC that like their spelling lists and spelling bees, how and when did it start for them?

FWIW, my DS was utterly spelling obsessed at 2.5 (not spelling bees at that age, but "Mummy can you spell..." and ".... spells ...!" the whole time) which was before he was reading fluently. With hindsight, it seemed to be a "yes, I really can understand this code" watershed. He's now good at spelling, but not especially keen on it.

For DS(16) it was around 3. It was then that the the dictionary became his favourite book. Funnily his initial interest was spelling words as you normally would and then spelling them backwards. Like ColinsMum's DS, he remains good at spelling but has no special interest in it.

Lol, for my DD, probably never.

Same here Cathy A.

My DS6 loved to spell starting at about 2.5. He would say things like "d-o-g" spells dog or "b-a-t" spells bat. That would sometimes evolve into us asking him to spell 3 or 4 letter words, and later longer words. He just loved to spell things. He didn't start sounding out words reading, though, until he was 4, and didn't start reading easy readers until he was 4.5. He still loves spelling and often asks me to make up spelling lists for him on the weekend! BTW: He's reading now at about a 3rd grade level and learned both by phonics (in the very beginning) and by whole word (very quickly after the first couple months).

Both DD's were early, DD6 spelled her first word, her name at 14 months, then was obsessed with it til she was an indepentant reader, now she spells better than I do, lol. DD5 started spelling words before 2, dog, cat, picnic,& pink, words like that, she even wrote little stories with the words she knew how to spell (so cute, I put her first one in her baby book). She still loves to play spelling games. Her favorite time to do this is when I'm tucking her in bed (it gets me to stay longer).

DS at 10 still has no interest in spelling (*sigh*) but more to the point of your question... my niece spelled orally well before she was a fluent reader. It was the source of a weird conversation with my sister (niece is her first child) where we finally figured out that I'd assumed kids always read before spelling since DS certainly did, and she had assumed it always worked the other way around because of how it worked for her child. Oops.

My 11 year old verbally gifted son with hypotonia and motor dyspraxia loved books, even as a baby. He started spelling and reading a year after he started walking. He especially liked Dr. Seuss's alphabet book and he made me read it to him so many times that I still have a lot of it memorized 10 years later. At 12 months he wanted me to pick him up so he could see the spice rack on our kitchen wall. He would point to each of the spices and wanted me to read the name and spell it for him. At 2 1/2 he identified the word jeep when my husband spelled it out for me, trying to keep the Christmas present a secret from our son. My son immediately said "Where's the jeep?" He wanted me to spell out more words for him while he was in the tub. He also read his first easy reader book by himself around that time and sometimes when he was still two, he would substitute the spelling for the word just for fun. For example, he would sometimes say I am a b-o-y and you are a g-i-r-l. When he started a musical theater class at 4 1/2, the much older kids would spell out words for him from their spelling lists or science books, trying to find words he couldn't identify. He got most of them right, especially what they thought were hard science words because his favorite book at that time was a science encyclopedia. He participated in a state pee wee spelling bee a few years ago for elementary aged kids after winning a county spelling bee. He is homeschooled and spelling, reading, and vocabulary are subjects I never had to worry about because he would learn those on his own by playing games he found on the internet or reading Wikipedia and always looking up definitions of words he had not heard before on online dictionaries.

Dd3 is starting to show interest in spelling, sometimes she'll say letter names, sometimes she'll write out a few letters to try for a word, sometimes she'll spell something out with the letter sounds. It's interesting to see her working through this.
Ds9 became interested in spelling when he realized he was really really good at it - he sometimes asks me to ask him a few big words, just for fun. This started around age 6. Still spelling on a spelling test is always much better than when he is just writing off the top of his head - I think this is probably common.