Learning to Read

Todd is learning to read. I am glad because I was starting to get a little worried, he's been 4 since November. Both Iyende and Scott were reading by their fourth birthdays. I know that you are not supposed to compare children and I know that most people consider any age before 6 to be early, but still it made me nervous. I didn't want to push him, though, I tried to give him space about it. I figured he would make an effort when he was ready to.

What prompted him to really want to learn to read was that he felt left out. We would be out somewhere and Iyende and Scott would see something funny and laugh about it, like a sign or something, and Todd would say, "Where, What?" and get frustrated because he couldn't read the sign. Also he's gotten curious about newspapers, he gets a kick out of finding words that he knows and then wants to know what the other words say.

He also is fascinated that numbers have a written name as well. He made this number train at pre-school:

I put it up and he likes to stand underneath it and say the numbers and then spell them out.