<p>Good point, jessie. That’s why some parents have to fight for their kids’ right to learn more–to be in gifted programs, etc. If I were a teacher and a child obviously already knew how to read, I wouldn’t make them do alphabet drills. </p>
<p>(I used to read under the desk, too. Who knows how much more I could have learned in elementary school if I had been given the chance.)</p>
<p>DS learned to read music at four. He learned to read at three when his sister was (she was five and had eye tracking problems. When solved, learned to read in one day.) She now reads more, much more, than he does. He is still reading scores however.</p>
<p>Jessie, I agree with you. Some kids are ready. However, I think studies show that young children learn better through play. And I am going to reiterate my point that independent thinking skills can only develop when kids have time to confront the world on their own, not always mediated through rote learning. Problem solving is an intellectual style not a transmitable body of knowledge.</p>
<p>OF course children learn better through play. Why don’t the “experts” who advocate flashcards and videos for babies know this? </p>
<p>To think that a video can substitute for an infants’ handling of an object to get to “know” it is just ludicrous.</p>
<p>And flashcards for colors instead of just talking to the kid and referring to the “red” truck and the “blue” ball…</p>
<p>But to illustrate the differences in development…my D knew all her colors at 18 mos., including pink and gray. (It never occurred to me to teach her coral and peach 
) She turned out to be quite artistic–maybe these were things she was programmed to notice. A neighbor child at age 5 couldn’t remember the color brown and kept asking “What is that color called again?” She is a perfectly bright kid.</p>
<p>Little kids seem to be hardwired to learn particular things at particular times.</p>
<p>I remember once when my son was very young, one of the books we brought home from the library had pictures of animals in it, with numbers under them (one bird, two squirrels, three dogs, etc.). Obviously, the book was intended to teach kids about animal names and counting. But when I tried to share the book with my son, he couldn’t care less about the animals or the numbers. All he cared about was the colors of the print on the various pages. That’s what he was programmed to be interested in that week.</p>
<p>And I think that in the early grades, worksheets are evil. Same son used to come home from kindergarten with perfectly filled out worksheets in which the kids had to count pictured objects and write the number on the top. They were taught to keep track of large numbers of objects by putting tick marks on each object as they counted it. But when my son wanted to count some rocks he had brought home from the beach, he couldn’t do it. He could only count pictures on a page, not real objects. The idea that he could keep track of what he was counting by moving the rocks from one pile to another was totally beyond him.</p>
<p>We were of the opinion that a child’s “job” was to play. And that playing with age appropriate toys did more to spur mental development than anything extraordinary we could do as parents. What was better to play and have them learn nursery rhyme songs or listen to a Brandenburg Concerto? What was better, to play hide-n-seek or learn a multiplication table by rote. What was better to delve into a scrambled pile of legos or learn to the difference between a octagon and a polygon. What was better, to read and have them memorize “The Giving Tree” or "teaching’ them to appreciate cubism.</p>
<p>I think you know what I would choose.</p>
<p>Childhood is not about accumulating knowledge and memorizing facts. This is a time of imagination and wonder with the world they live in.</p>
<p>Mythmom that is just beautifully stated. I couldn’t agree more:</p>
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<p>TrinSF, I had one of those natural readers, too. They just seem to be more print-oriented than other kids are.</p>
<p>Schools can’t seem to realize that the best thing to do with these kids is to simply leave them alone, with some interesting things to do, while the other kids are having systematic reading instruction in kindergarten and first grade.</p>
<p>If I ruled the world, there would be books, Legos, art materials, and a bunch of computers with lots of interesting educational software on them on one side of the classroom, and the kids for whom a particular lesson was ill-suited (such as a basic alphabet lesson for kids who are already reading fluently) could simply be sent to the other part of the room to do whatever they wanted, as long as they did it quietly and didn’t make a mess. Why make them suffer through worksheets that are inappropriate for them, and why take the teacher’s attention away from the kids who really do need instruction in the topic covered by the worksheet?</p>