at what age did your child learn to read?

[Guest Cindie2dds]

Meaning, understand how to blend sounds, not just knowing the sounds of the letters.

 

My oldest was a young 4 year old when she taught herself how to read and now reads on a 4th grade level. My current 4.5 year old doesn't even know the sounds yet and she's not interested. I am a firm believer of letting a child naturally learn to read at their own pace. She might be closer to six or seven. Kids are so amazingly unique! :D

[Heidi @ Mt Hope]

4.5, 3.5, 3.5

[Ali in OR]

I too think of a reader as more than just decoding CVC words. My girls were both 6 when I began to see them as readers. At that point we had finished Phonics Pathways and they could read anything that they wanted to. My youngest was rather dramatic--she went from Nate the Great books to Sea of Monsters (2nd in the Percy Jackson series). We had listened to The Lightning Thief on a car trip and she got so hooked that she plunged into Sea of Monsters on her own. My girls were not unusually early at starting to read but they did progress quickly once they had the basics down.

[kamom]

Mine were both redaing simple books at four. I thought that was early but I see it's common with folks on here.

[Sun]

People's opinions of when a child is really reading vary, which is, I assume, why the OP included a definition for people to use when voting.

 

Did other people who define reading as something other than sounding out simple words vote according to their own definitions or according to the OP's definition? I agree that I didn't really consider my own child to be reading when he could sound out CVC words, but I voted for the age when he could do that --which was considerably earlier than when he would pick up a book and read!

[Melissa in Australia]

my children were able to understand blends etc at age 5-6, able to read books like Dr Seuss, but they weren't reading chapter books and novels until near to 10, some of them 11.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I didn't see it was multiple options either..

 

DS started reading syllables when he was 2. I remember that he was 3'ish, when *he* was doing the reading time at daycare. He was reading picture books to the other kids, while the daycare workers were cleaning up. At 5 he was reading Harry Potter, but before that, the lack of appropriate material slowed him down. What do you give a 4yo to read? A Magic Tree House was taking a whole 20 minutes to read, not even long enough to be back home from the bookstore... He needed more meat than that.

 

DD was average, somewhere during grade 1, she started to read. So probably 6 1/2. Now at 10yo, she's a fluent reader in two languages.

[Mommy22alyns]

I called both girls true readers sometime when they were 4.

[Audrey]

I put 5, but I honestly don't remember anymore. Like most things, it's a process.

[Nicole M]

I put 5, but I honestly don't remember anymore. Like most things, it's a process.

 

Me, too. Hard to remember. I think reading fluently for each boy came at 6 and 7, respectively. Honestly, I'm in the "don't give a rat's ass" category of parent, about when they learn to read. My personal bias is that it's more important to read aloud to the children than to have them reading silently at an early age. Read-aloud books typically have much more sophisticated vocabulary, plot and character development than early chapter books, and I think the time spent reading with a child is so rich and beautiful, I'm actually glad I had "late" readers. My oldest was in school when he was learning to read, and it was a crisis that he wasn't on the school schedule. His reading specialist caused him quite a lot of unnecessary anxiety, and I regret that I did not pull him out of that situation. My second never went to school and went from BOB books to Billy & Blaze to The Hobbit in a matter of months, in second grade.

[Punks in Ontario]

I put 4, but they were more like 6 before they really started reading anything. My last guy is going to be seven, before he can read a typical non graded kids book.

[AngieW in Texas]

My oldest was reading at K level at 3yo. She was reading at about a 3rd grade level by 5yo.

 

My middle dd blossomed between 5.5yo and 6yo (right after she finished OT). She went from basic code at 5.5yo to about 2nd grade level at 6yo.

 

My youngest dd is dyslexic. She was able to sound out basic code words at 5yo, but wasn't able to actually follow a story written in basic code until 7.5yo. She was reading at a 2nd grade level at 8.5yo.

[Aoife]

DS1 is my eldest and first experience with teaching reading.

 

He picked up his letter and letter sounds a bit before 24 months watching leap frog DVDs. He started asking how to read when he was 2 so I did letter of the week for fun because I didn't want to move ahead too fast. At about 3 we started trying to learn to read through OPGTR but we both hated that book and we tried a few other before finding dancing bears. DS1 figured out segmenting and blending at about 3.5 but had been doing CVC since age 3. At this point at right before four he can read a pretty good bit. :)

[Garga]

I feel that he didn't know how to read until he was able to do it fairly fluently and for fun until he was about 7. Before then he would cry or get angry at Each And Every Reading Lesson. And we tried three different curric's.

 

My 5 yo isn't as emotional so, while he is still very slow, he doesn't cry and get angry. This means that he is learning faster than my eldest (because the lesson isn't ending early in tears or growls of anger), so I think he'll be reading fluently and for fun sooner than my first son.

[DawnM]

7 or 8 for my Aspie with some learning delays. Well, not exactly true. He could read simple sentences by 6, but not 1st grade readers. That happened around age 8.

 

Second son, 5 for simple blend words.

 

Third son probably the same, age 5. He is 6 and reading at about a high 2nd grade level now. Once he was ready, he took off.

[IsabelC]

Only on TWTM forum would there be a "0-12 months" option for this question :D

 

I know we've had the discussion before about what constitutes "reading", but I can't find the thread right now...

 

My children are 7, 5 and 2 years old. By the standard of "can combine two or three letters to sound out a word" they are all reading. By the "Harry Potter" yardstick, none of them are. (Although ds7 could probably struggle through it now if I really pushed him, but we've decided to leave it until next year both due to his lack of emotional maturity / general knowledge, and so that he can read it easily enough to actually enjoy it.)

[TX Bluebonnet]

My ds8 was three years and two months old when I discovered he could read but, I think he was reading before that.

[mycalling]

early-6, late-3, early-5, late-4.

 

My step-daughter wasn't taught until 8 when her mother finally sent her to school..no, she wasn't homeschooling. My current 3yo isn't really learning letters yet.

[ShutterBug]

Could sound out words at 2.5 and could read small sentences and simple books by 3 (no real instruction, just lots of reading to him). His interest waxed and waned for the year after that and since there was no need to push it, I didn't push it.

 

He had a sudden resurgence in interest at 4 and by his 5th birthday was reading chapter books.

[EthiopianFood]

Only on TWTM forum would there be a "0-12 months" option for this question :D

 

:lol: Those gifted kids do what they do, so I didn't want to leave anyone out!

[Snowfall]

I said 5 because in your OP you asked when they could actually blend sounds, but I haven't read the other posts to see if you were ever more specific than that. However, she's just now, at 6.5, to the point of reading anything other than BOB Books type things.

[Brindee]

Only on TWTM forum would there be a "0-12 months" option for this question :D

:iagree:

 

I see someone has checked that one too. I'm curious if that little one read chapter books? I wonder how many checks there'd be if one of the choices was "In utero"! :lol: jk, jk :D

 

We have a friend whose dd was reading very well at age 3. She read the scripture reading for church! She was small for her age, so it looked like a baby up there reading! It was so very cute! :001_smile:

 

Mine were (by birth order) 5, 7 and 6 when they were reading chapter books. Sounding things out still would be 3, 6 and 5.

[Greenmama2]

Four. What a beautifully symmetrical distribution curve!

[kitten18]

DD was about 4.5 when she started to blend/sound out words. She was close to 7 before she moved past BOB books and other simple things like that and started to REALLY read.

 

DS recently turned 5, he is just starting to do a little bit of sounding out.

 

 

I didn't read the rest of the thread, I was scared to read about 3 year olds reading chapter books.:leaving:

[myfatherslily]

My DD was 4.5. My son will be 5 in January and he's getting close, but isn't ready yet.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

Only on TWTM forum would there be a "0-12 months" option for this question :D

 

 

While I can't claim my son was reading in that age category, he was 10 months old when we realised he knew his letters! We had a foam carpet with the alphabet on it, you know the type of carpets, with foam squares that you can move and place in different ways each day. Well, he could point out every single letter at that age.

At 1 1/2, his greatest pleasure was to read aloud license plates (it was eye level for him :lol: ) He wasn't reading, he was just naming the letters and numbers out loud. At 2 1/2, he was taller and he was 'reading' the car names (camry, civic, etc...) That's how he figured out reading. I would name the car, and he would look at the letters, and voilà. I did no teaching! Perfect car schooling! :lol:

 

His best outing was to a parking lot. We would do that every single day, and it was the highlight of his day. Wow mom, so many cars to read!

 

He was also wearing a watch with hands at 2 1/2, and was capable of reading it.

 

But you know what's funny? If you were to show him a drawing of a cat - not a picture, just a drawing - he would not recognise it for what it was. My mom had little wooden blocks with drawings on 5 sides, and a letter on the 6the size. He could read the letter, but he could not identify any of the drawings before the age of 6.. Brains are wired in very weird ways at time...

[In the Rain]

I voted on the poll (4&5) according to the description RaeAnn gave. I didn't actually consider my kids "readers" for a long time after that.

 

Both of my kids took a break after the initial rush of learning sounds and blending. :001_huh:

[Sputterduck]

I think mine was 3, but I'm not sure. He's reading at a 5th grade level now that he is 6.

[*Amber*]

As far as blending CVC words my oldest was 5 and number two was 3 almost 4. But they are both still emerging readers at this point. The older one is 7 (just turned) and she has just started the 2nd grade HOP. Number two turned 4 in August and we are making are way through HOP K (more than half way done). They are both reading but neither is what I consider fluent yet.