I cannot understand why it is so difficult to teach children to read. My three could read before they enrolled in first grade. I could have prevented this, of course, if I had kept books and alphabet related toys away from them. Failing that, their learning to read was inevitable, especially with their mother regularly reading books to them.
Contrary to popular claims...not all glasses are equally full.
My grandkids, age 2 years + 1 month - bring ME books to read every night before going to sleep when I babysit.
Making Dinosaurs growl, finding trees, counting plants, counting cars, finding balls, seeing birds fly, tracing triangles, ....
Makes fun night for the twins.
My first two were just like that, reading came very easily to them. My third one did not read much at all until third grade. My fourth read by the end of first grade. I read to all of them and they all grew up in a reading/language rich home. The first two went to public school until the older one started third grade and the younger one started first. The third one went to private kindergarten and other than that, they were all homeschooled. I think each child is ready to read on his or her own schedule. I think Raymond Moore was right about this....
The first two graduated from college summa cum laude. The third one will do so as well, with an almost perfect grade point average (he just made his first A- which loses the perfect 4.0 at his school). He reads much heavier stuff and writes better than any of the others, despite the fact that he could not read much before third grade and could not write a coherent paragraph before middle school. My fourth one is a junior and is just now actually enjoying reading but is a very good writer - I always thought that for kids to be good writers they needed to read a lot. Kids are good at blowing away our preconceptions!
i know... "they" make it difficult... i taught my older son, who as five when we adopted him, to read within eight months of his moving in with us... on top of that, he couldn't talk when he came to live with us... i taught our younger son, who was six months when he came to live with us, all of his letter sounds and blends by the time he was two... i left him alone after that, and he began reading on his own by the time he was three... i've taught a couple of other kindergarteners how to read (family members)... we homeschool...
as for math, i spent the first 3-4 years teaching my kids the fundamentals... inside and out... now both pretty much do math on their own... one is eighth grade, the other is fifth...