Experiments to do with your baby (theatlantic.com)

My intuition (based on anecdotes and observations, not hard data) is that nature provides a starting point, and perhaps an ultimate cap or speed limit to growth, but nurture provides the year over year progress. The most successful people I know nailed the nurture (or hard work) part of the equation. They were all at least smart, but very few were the smartest in the room at a young age. Over time they've appeared smarter and smarter to their surrounding audience.

In general, early reading is less remarkable (in English) than people think it is, because with the right materials[1] English can be seen by a young learner as a rather consistent writing system that is not insuperably hard to decode.

That said, my four homeschooled children, the first two of whom are strongly bilingual in Chinese and English, having lived in Taiwan in early childhood, were early but not strikingly precocious readers, and all my children were learning a lot of other things besides reading in their early childhood, of which chess was perhaps more conspicuously precocious than reading. Earliness is less important than long-term solid development of skill, and it sounds like the parents of some of the HN participants here who have personally observed examples of very precocious reading were well aware of that.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Minutes-ebook/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Read-Linguistic-Leonard-Bloomfiel...

http://eps.schoolspecialty.com/products/details.cfm?serieson...

Another friend of mine found out their son was a reader when he started kindergarten. He was always 'reading' the books in the house, but his parents thought he had just memorised them from being ready. In fact his kindergarten teachers gave him new stuff to read and he lapped it up. He was reading the first Harry Potter book by the second grade. My friend actually got frustrated because his son didn't want to do father/son things, but preferred to read.

Some kids are gifted readers, just like some are gifted at hitting a ball with a bat. The important thing is (a) spend extra time and attention if it is clear they do have a gift and (b) don't feel like your child is somehow behind if there is a kid like this in their class.

It was important that you understood how to get from point a to b. You were always good at being able to put things together easily. Sequencing and figuring out how a character came to be are elements that are often overlooked. Knowing that 1 story could be many with just a small twist is what the Coville books were so good at. Another thing is that your father and I never talked down to you and allowed you to come to your own conclusions.

But this is heresy without a source.

A couple of weeks of this and they were reading. We continued to read to them but just for fun, for the theatre of it. With voices and acting out, hilarious with young kids.

My youngest got tired of all that and would grab the book and go to his room to read it alone. He was also reading Wizard of Oz when he entered Kindergarten.

Funny, teachers are often highly resistant to admitting any kid is at a different level. They even went so far as to bring in a 'reading expert' to test him. Showed him some stupid picture with a 6-word poem and read it to him, asked him what it 'meant'. Nothing of course. So he 'was reading at a normal 5-year-old level'.

Did they ever just ask him to read a book? No. Why not? What is the deal with teachers? Is it inconvenient to have kids at different levels so they go into denial? Do they feel threatened?

This isn't an isolated case. Its been played out in my experience with my kid and others of my friends. I've been buttonholed by experienced teachers and given a tirade on the evils of teaching kids on your own.

I like teachers, respect them. But they often have a chip on their shoulders, and its holding kids back.

I did teach both my children to count on their fingers using the pattern taught by ASL. I've noticed that sometimes her friends look at her oddly when she holds up her index, middle, and thumb for the number three, and obviously, they have no clue that holding up the index, middle, and ring fingers might mean either six or three to her depending on to whom she is talking.

I introduced both my children to an awesome game when they were just in kindergarten: http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ it teaches basic algebraic concepts cloaked in the guise of a fun puzzle game.

In written form, for example, we can represent 10 and 20 without 0 easily, as the 0 is just a syntactic placeholder:

- Roman Numerals: X and XX

- Scientific Notation: 1e1 and 2e1

- Base 16: a and 14

- Set theory: {{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}} and {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

But more importantly, the existence of the number 10 is independent of it's representation. Mathematically, the existence of the natural numbers depends on a "unit" (which we often represent with 1) and a method for incrementing or inducing the subsequent number.[1]

0 ensures the existence of groups [2], and by extension many important mathematical structures. I get your point though, and I wonder what would be an accurate, but still relatable, reason for a young person to grasp the importance the number 0?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_infinity

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_(mathematics)

    ELDERLY LADY: How old are you, little boy?
    YOU: (middle finger)
    ELDERLY LADY: WHAT?!?
    YOU: It's 4 in binary.
    ELDERLY LADY: Oh, for a second, I thought you ...
    YOU: (two middle fingers)
    ELDERLY LADY: WHAT?!?
    YOU: Oh, sorry, I was just guessing your age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary