For a couple years now Adrian’s been learning to read. He’s been working hard at it and progressing well.
And then he turned 7.
Suddenly, he no longer needs phonics lessons. He is just reading. He recently asked to reading the first Magic Tree House book and is having no trouble with it at all.
I started thinking about how Ani learned to read at 4. At 7 she started reading the Rainbow Fairies series and just took off. Fritz learned to read at 5. At 7 he started reading the Magic Tree House series and he was suddenly a great reader. Now Adrian is following the same path.
My uncle always said they learned to read the first year of school (which was first grade back then) and within a year pretty much all the kids were reading, when they were 7. For the half year Adrian was in kindergarten, I watched his teacher struggle to teach the kids letters/sounds/sight words (most of the kids were not reading at all before starting school). The kids in Fritz’s 2nd grade class, however, were all reading fluently.
I think first grade/7 years old is magic somehow when it comes to reading for most kids without learning disabilities. It’s so fun to watch kids get to that point of, as Cameron called it when he was 6, “speed reading.” (Note I did not include Cameron when talking about my kids who took off with their reading at 7. Since he has dyslexia, I am not surprised it didn’t go that way for him. There were many red flags that he had that particular disability long before he turned 7.)
Smaller on the Outside 